The gift of love

One of the many beautiful sayings attributed to the great philosopher Blaise Pascal runs as follows: "Human beings must be known to be loved, but divine things must be loved to be known."

While we all, at some time or other, have experienced how true this saying is, in today's Gospel we have Our Lord's confirmation for it. God is infinite and incomprehensible, and He is therefore infinitely remote from our limited and imperfect knowledge.

And yet Jesus Christ, who is God, has become man to tell us about God's infinite love for us, a love which has become incarnate for our sakes. By responding to such love through faith, we are in a position not only to become more and more intimately united to him in the spirit of true love, but also to learn more about him.

In today's Gospel we read these words of Jesus: "This is my commandment: that you should love one another as I have loved you!" The way God has loved us in Jesus Christ must be the model of our love for God and neighbour. It should urge us more and more to translate this love into a total dedication to God not only of what we have and do, but of what we are.

Love is Our Lord's commandment par excellence, a very special one and above all other commandments. It is 'my' commandment, says Jesus, "the one nearest to my heart". It is the synopsis of all Jesus' sayings and teachings. "As I have loved you!"

Not any kind of love will do. Ours should be a love that, in spite of all its limitations, should resemble Christ's love for us: total, selfless, at the cost of everything, even if it leads unto death. What an ideal for a genuine Christian! It opens up a limitless horizon for all we can do as an expression of our love for God translated into works of love for our neighbour.

Thanks to Our Lord's teachings and example, many Christians throughout the ages have taken this message very seriously. They have engaged in works involving total dedication of self for the love of Christ, as a testimony of their faith in him and of their dedication for the good of others.

Who can count the number of followers of Christ who have given witness of their faith and love for Christ through martyrdom (from the Greek martyria, meaning witness)? The list of saints, people from all walks of life like ourselves, is endless: martyrs, virgins, confessors, missionaries, etc. All these were people who have literally 'fallen in love' with Christ and have learned to know him and to see him reflected in their neighbours.

Similar persons, thank God, are not lacking even in this day and age. Their loving dedication may be hidden, but their number is known to God alones In today's world, so tainted with materialism and spoiled by the wrong values, their dedication is hardly noticed and their work hardly appreciated. But nothing is hidden from the eyes of God.

Never throughout the entire history of humanity has the word "love" been heard as much as in our times; but it is also true that it has never meant so little. Love in our days tends to be more identified with pleasure and sex than with sacrifice and commitment; hence never more than in today's so-called 'developed civilisation' has Christ's message been so urgent and so meaningful: "Love one another as I have loved you!"

In this context what St Augustine has written about love remains actual: "It has the hands to help others, it has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy, it has eyes to see their misery and want, it has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like!"