The Commandment of Love: Following Christ's Example

05-18-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Albert

The time of the Gospel was the Last Supper, specifically, immediately after Judas had left the table to betray Jesus when he would go to the garden of Gethsemane. The end was near. Jesus had tried so hard to teach his disciples his message of love. This is his final effort with words, the next-to-last words of a man close to death.

Jesus says, "I will give you a new commandment; love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The apostles still did not "get it." Jesus spread the message of love and deeds of love that his father had chosen to deliver through him. The way that we humans learn to love is through a human person. The way that we learn to love deeply is to learn from a perfectly loving human—Jesus.

Jesus was not only human; he was the archetype of humanity. The message of love had been proclaimed long before, in the third book of the Bible, Leviticus. What Jesus was adding that was new was that our loving God first loved us; He showed His love in the person of Jesus, who was love enfleshed. Being the archetype of humanity included His archetypical love.

Jesus showed in word and example, in confrontations with others, in the sickness and the death of others, in being rejected by those He came to serve, the loving message of His Father. His Father and Jesus continue to love us. He loved us first.

We cannot love back without the love with which He embraces us. He loves us because that is His very nature. He tells us that being loved will enable us to love everyone. Then, He tells us that folks we do not know, who are not His disciples, will see us, will be drawn to us, and through us, will be led to Jesus, to our God. This loving kingdom of God begins now.

The command of love is sacrificial. The love that the followers of Jesus are to show is to be in keeping with this sacrificial call. It is to be entirely others-centered, to be a laying down of one's life combined with a trusting in God that in the Lord's power, it will be taken up again.

The love that Jesus is commanding may be a form of branding—a branding of Jesus' self, to be sure. To make Jesus' presence real in the world is to receive the love of Jesus in the first place.

Thus, we realize as we reflect on this scripture that the God of love wants to flow through us to our world. There are many commands that we find in scripture, but this is the most fundamental one.

It was the heart of Jesus' mission, and we pray that it can be the heart of our lives as well—to receive and give a love that overcomes all.