How does the risen Lord become real in our lives today? In what way does the resurrection of Jesus make a difference and is not just another event in the past otherwise irrelevant to the survival issues of the present world? The gospel reading for the fifth Sunday of Easter (John 13:31-35) pithily gives us the essential teaching of Jesus Christ so distinctive of Him that it is the measure of His abiding presence among us and of our fidelity to Him.
Love one another
Where Jesus according to the other evangelists instituted the Eucharist during the Last Supper, John in lieu narrated what is called the last discourse of Jesus. This five-chapter narrative is evidently not only a pre-Calvary farewell address, but a lengthy post-resurrection teaching as well, intended for all believers of all ages. Following His washing of the feet of the disciples and the departure of Judas, Jesus enunciated His new commandment to His “children”: Love one another.
Love as institutional. More than being merely moral or legal, this commandment is a doctrine that is supposed to characterize the very life of His followers. “This is how all will know that you are my disciples.” This mission of love in conjunction with the washing of feet is presented to us as the meaning and equivalent of the Eucharist. For John this commandment of love is as much a memorial, a sacrament as the Eucharist. To participate in the Eucharist we must have love for one another, and when we love one another its highest expression is the Eucharist.
As I have loved you
The criterion for the love we Christians are commanded to minister to the world is Jesus’ own love. “As much as” He has loved us means similarity and conformity in depth and forms and expressions. It involves both the washing of feet and the self-offering on the cross. It connotes forgiving one’s enemies, giving drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry, visiting the sick and welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, willingness to be the last, and being beholden to the truth. Just as Jesus was and is in His whole life and in all His actions the sacrament of God’s saving love for humankind, so also His followers are mandated by the glorious Christ to signify and communicate this divine love in all their actions. Collectively as a community of faith and individually as His disciples, we are called to be a visible sign and sacrament of the love-presence of Jesus in the world.
The command to love others is not unique to Jesus or His followers. The Jews are told in the law (Leviticus 19:18) to love their neighbors as they love themselves. But it is exclusive in terms of one’s relatives or compatriots, and it is with the presumption that one should hate one’s enemies. The mandatum of Jesus is universal love, without distinctions or qualifications; all the others are to be loved as one loves oneself. And this mission of charity has for its paradigm no other than Jesus Himself as the Lord of love and life. The extent of His own love for them, the “tremendous lover,” is what He requires of them in their love for others. Saint John’s references to time: “only a little while longer,” “soon,” “now,” say that we do not have to wait for the end-time to savor the promised blessings. In Jesus, whose “hour” has come and begun, we already have God’s love as a reality here and now.
Alálaong bagá, the question is on our part: Do we already live by the love of Jesus? In the five hundred years of Christianity in our land, what are the concrete signs of Jesus’ love operative in our midst? In a culture of politics of vested interests, of vicious prefabrications, of rampant graft and corruption, of brutish violence and injustice, and of numbing poverty, does Christianity not so nominal and but a distant dream? Where is the civilization of love we speak of? It is there because Jesus Christ is risen, but in inchoate forms and sparse instances on our part. The imperative for change and renewal in our culture is a call for authentic conversion among us Christians and is only postponed to our own detriment.
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