They’ll know we are Christians by our love – a scriptural reflection on the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year C

I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. Jn 13:34

These words of Jesus to his disciples are from the Last Supper discourse (chapters 13 through 17) of John’s Gospel. Having just washed the feet of the disciples, Jesus teaches them one last time before he goes to be arrested, tortured, and executed. I urge all to read and reflect on the teaching that Jesus presents in these chapters. Jesus doesn’t instruct his disciples to revenge his death. He orders them to love. If they love him, they MUST love one another as he has loved them.

Jesus commandment to love one another is not just isolated to John’s Gospel. Paul writes in his 1st letter to the Corinthians (chapter 13) that we can be the most gifted of speakers; we can prophesy and possess the knowledge of the universe; we can have faith that will move mountains, but, if we do not have love, we are worthless. In his 1st letter, John writes that we must love not just in word but in action. “Beloved, if God so loved us (that he sent us his Son), we also must love one another.”

Our lives have only one purpose, to love as Jesus loved. Our home and family, our community, our places of work are nothing more than one grand classroom in which we learn to love. This assignment is not for sissies or the weak. For Jesus calls us to love not only when it’s easy and convenient, but to love when it is hard to love. We must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

Even though we will never love as perfectly as Jesus loved; even though we may fail to love time and time again, we must continue to persevere and never quit practicing how to love. Every morning offers us another opportunity to love as Jesus loved.

Fr Richard Rohr states that Christianity must be more than just another organized religion. IT MUST BE A WAY OF LIFE. In a world filled with such great suffering there is no place for those who say they believe in Jesus as their own personal savior but are warlike, greedy, racist, selfish and vain. We will only be known as Christians in the way we love.

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Deacon Bob

I am a composer, performer, poet, educator, spiritual director, and permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. I just recently retired after 42 years of full-time ministry in the Catholic Church. I continue to serve in the Church part-time. I have been blessed to be united in marriage to my bride, Ruth, since 1974. I am father to four wonderful adult children, and grandfather to five equally wonderful grandchildren. In my lifetime, I have received a B.A. in Music (UST), M.A. in Pastoral Studies (St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, UST), Certified Spiritual Director. Ordained to the Permanent Diaconate for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, in 1991. Composer, musician, author, poet, educator. The Gospels drive my political choices, hence, leading me toward a more liberal, other-centered politics rather than conservative politics. The great commandment of Jesus to love one another as he has loved us, as well as the criteria he gives in Matthew 25 by which we are to be judged at the end of time directs my actions and thoughts.

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