6th Sunday of Easter
April 30, 1989
John 14: 23-29Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29
St. Theresa, Bronx
“Anyone who loves me will be true to my
word” (John 14: 23).
When Jesus speaks of his “word,” he
means his teaching, which he summarized in last Sunday’s gospel: “This is how all will know you for my
disciples: your love for one another” (John
13: 35).
But the “word” of Jesus, our love for
one another, always has to be specified.
You may remember Lucy Van Pelt telling her brother Linus that she loved
mankind; it was people she couldn’t stand.
St. John Bosco advised his Salesians to love their pupils because love
is the key that unlocks hearts. But, he
continued, it isn’t enuf to love them.
They must know they are loved.
They have to be told. Even more,
they have to be shown.
Our own experience confirms the need to
specify love, i.e., to make it real thru specific deeds. Telling a friend or a spouse, “I love you”
isn’t enuf. We have to help or comfort
or remember or just be with our beloved, according to her or his needs.
The Seven Works of Mercy, by Caravaggio |
The council of Jerusalem and the whole
Jerusalem church, guided by the Holy Spirit, showed their love for others by
not imposing all these restrictions on people who came from such a vastly
different background. Belief in Jesus as
the Messiah was enuf to unite Gentile and Jew in a common faith.
Even so, the Church leaders did command
certain actions. They told the Gentile
Christians that they would “be well advised to avoid” idolatry, blood, and
unchastity (Acts 15:29). Obviously, one
could not worship the one true God, and idols as well. Avoiding blood and the meat of strangled
animals, i.e., meat with the blood still in it, meant respecting God’s power
over life; for the ancients viewed blood as the vehicle of life. The “life’s blood,” we say. Avoiding unchastity, illicit sexual union,
meant a respect for the sacredness of sex, for family, for the dignity of the
human person. So the 3 essentials
commanded are 3 concrete expressions of love for God and for neighbor. “Anyone who loves me will be true to my word: love on another.”
Jesus makes a promise to go along with
that saying, that command: “Anyone who
loves me will be true to my word, and my Father will love him; we will come to
him and make our dwelling place with him always” (John 14:23). That is a promise of eternal life.
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