Jesus shares with us three important lessons of love.

Each year on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, the lectionary gently shifts us toward the Pentecost mystery with the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles illustrating the Lord’s abiding presence in the community as manifested in the evolution and exercise of authority in the Church.  The apostles Peter and John went down into Samaria, and they laid hands on the newly baptized and they received the Holy Spirit.

Then in the first letter of Peter, Peter writes:  “Beloved, sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart.”  Peter goes on to say:  “Christ was put to death in the flesh; he was brought to life in the Spirit.”

In the Gospel, Jesus prays:  “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of Truth.”

To prepare us for the great feast of Pentecost, Jesus gives us three lessons on love  -- the power of love, the person  of love, and the proof of love.

1.      THE POWER OF LOVE -  In the words of Jesus, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments…Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me.”

We must be so very careful how we hear this.  It is possible to understand the commandments has “If you love me, prove it by keeping the commandments…Loving God becomes a kind of human achievement.  This I suggest is a failed understanding of the grace of God in our lives.  The call to love is not just a matter of spiritual will power.

If we understand this text from the standpoint of grace it yields a different understanding.  Loving God is a gift of God.   God’s grace is given to us so very freely.   So the meaning is:  If you love me, you will by this love I have given you keep my commandments.  Keeping the commandments is the fruit of love, not the cause of it.  Love comes first.  When love is received and experienced, we begin by the power of that love to keep the commandments.

Yes, it is possible to keep the commandments to some extent out of fear.  But in doing so, we lose out on the great mystery that has been given to us from the moment of our baptism.  We are God’s beloved.

If is far better to keep the commandments by the grace of God’s love at work within us.

Living with the mystery of God’s grace, love is always extravagant and expansive.

Do we sometimes says we love God but then ask such things:  ”Do I have to go to Church?  Do I have to pray?  And if so, how often and for how long?  Do I have to go to confession?  And if so, how frequently?  What’s the least amount I can put in the collection or give to the poor and still be in compliance with the tithing that the Lord asks of us?  

Now I was born at night but not last night.  I understand we have busy lives and our prayer life can easily get squeezed out in the midst of all the commitments I have.

But to prepare us for the great Pentecost mystery that God is to be the true North Star of our lives, Jesus is giving us this lesson on the power of love.   Love doesn’t talk or think like what is the least I have to do be a disciples of Jesus.  Love has the power to transform our desires from our selfish ends, toward the beloved, toward God Himself.

Asking for moral guidelines may not be wrong, but too often the question seems to want the bare minimum.

Love is extravagant and excited to do and to give.  Love has an incredible power.

In the first letter of John we read:  “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome.”  Yes, love lightens every load.  We keep his commandments, not because we have to, but because we want to.   And even if his commandments involve significant changes, love excites us with a desire to keep God’s love, to fulfill His wishes for us.

2.       THE PERSON OF LOVE    In the words of Jesus:  “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. He remains with you and will be with you.”

T   The third person of the Blessed Trinity, living in us as in a temple, will change us and stir us to love, He who is love will love God in us.  We love because He has first loved us.

      We worship God in a Trinity of persons.  We come to experience God as a person who has an unending love for us.  In the words of Jesus, “By this all shall that you are my disciples, by your love for one another.”  Our spirituality is relational, relational, relational.  This is how we are known as the disciples of Jesus.

3.       THE PROOF OF GOD’S LOVE   In the words of Jesus:  “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”

Simply put:  The proof of God’s love and its power to transform is ourselves.  It is our lives. I have within myself the life of the Spirit of Jesus.  Jesus has made His home within me.  I have within myself the wellspring of eternal life.  I am not an orphan.  Rather I am God’s beloved son.  I am a witness of the proof of God’s love.

I am a witness of God’s love, are you?

Have a blessed day.