Jesus’ sayings: ‘I call you friends, I command you, love one another’ define who we
are: we are friends of Jesus and our mission is to love one another. Everything comes
into existence because of God’s love. Therefore, the force that moves the universe is
love. God is love, and as human beings created in the image of God, our true id is love.
Jesus says: I call you friends! When Moses encountered God on mount Sinai, he had
to put a veil over his face but God’s love became one like us in Jesus and he made us
his friends. Apocryphal book Odes of Solomon says: ‘my joy is the Lord, to him I run; in
his friendliness, he makes himself small; he became as I am, so that I might lay hold of
him. I don’t shrink back when I gaze on him, for he is my mercy’. We all want to be in a
place that gives joy. Secret of joy is love, from which flows desire and action for peace.
Joy is liberation from what crushes the human spirit, to let go our confrontational self.
In one of Sherlock Holmes stories, it says, ‘love died and hate was born’. In the Bible,
hatred, envy began with the story of Cain and Abel. Throughout human history, hate,
envy started wars, genocides and torn families apart! When Jesus was crucified hate
died and love was born. In Baptism, we are told, you died with Christ and you are born
anew or hate died in us and love was born in us. Love is given to us as a command.
Command in Latin is mandatum means credential, commission, a task; we are
commissioned to live as friends of Jesus.
God is where love is. If God is the ground of our being, life is a movement in love.
Loving one another is to make our life at the disposal of the other, unconditional love,
or laying down life for others, how Jesus loved us [a mother’s love] and this is the
highest form of love. Jesus died for us because we are his friends; his love is a free gift;
there is no force or demand in love! Jesus freely embraced the cross and the love
manifested on the cross defeats violence, hatred, enmity, injustice. Love of Jesus
removes all inequalities between human beings; love qualifies who we are…love in
deed and truth. In the absence of love dark emotions and thoughts control our lives;
despair, hatred and revenge poison life. Loving without expecting anything in return is
the antidote to all life issues. We regret, repent for our unloving behavior because we
know only love can heal hurts and keep us moving. Jesus says, by loving, the world
will know you are my disciples. Our faith in Christ is a commitment to love; our love for
God, we live in fellowship in the families, in the community, a life that transforms the
world. To make the ideal of love a reality, bring joy to human hearts, is church’s
mission. Joy is the welcoming spirit in church; a church without joy discourages
seekers of faith.
A mother’s day story: One day a partially deaf boy came home from school with a note.
It says that his parents take him out of school, that the boy was too stupid to learn.
When the boy’s mother read the note, she said: my son Tom isn’t too stupid to learn. I
will teach him myself. When Tom died many years later, the people of this nation paid
tribute to him by turning off the nations’ lights, which Tom invented, for one full minute.
Thomas Alva Edison invented not only the light bulb we read by but also the motion
picture we watch and the record player we listen to. He has more than 1000 patents to
his credit. The credit goes to his mother! From mothers we learn first lessons of
sacrificial love. Mothers help new generations to appreciate beauty and make the world
a better place by their compassionate love. A child is uniquely special to its mother. God
hasn’t made any junk; he has infused his love in everything he created. We the Church
exists to discover and witness to that love and love like God who shows no partiality, if
only we remain in Christ’s love!