Sunday May 18th Love One Another
“Love One Another”
How do we know if we are true followers of Jesus? Is it by spending long periods in prayer and meditation, being faithful to all the rules and regulations of the church, by fasting and almsgiving?
The real test is in the few lines in today’s Gospel about loving one another. Love is the mark of the disciple. Love that reaches out in Mercy and compassion, care and affirmation, listening and service. Love that influences how I treat people every day.
There are people in our world who would regard themselves as religious, keeping all the rules, attending many religious services and trying to preserve the past and yet are cold hearted and unforgiving. Tolerance is not part of their vocabulary. They can be very judgemental of people who do not see things their way.
Love is the atmosphere we live in as followers of Jesus. From this flows the way the Christian community lives and worships. Prayer is a means to love, but not an end in itself, in loving and caring for others and in particular those close to us we pray to Jesus for them, that all will be well with them and that they will have peace in their hearts and lives. This is what Jesus himself did affording people the opportunity to live life to the fullest.
A way of growing in love is to be grateful for the love in our own lives. There are so many people who give to us in so many different ways every day. People who we work with, people we meet socially, people we play games with and people who give to us in our community. A prayer each night can be to think back over the day and to think of all those people we have encountered and to thank God for all the love that we have received through them.
The world that we live in is full of very good and loving people but there is plenty coldness and evil in our world also. There is a huge amount of greed and selfishness. People are constantly being hurt, abused and used. As followers of Jesus, as people of love we must reach out to all who are hurting and bring them healing. This can be achieved in the most ordinary and natural way by our loving presence.
Like Jesus we must be constantly endeavouring with love to change the selfishness and coldness of our world. Jesus spoke lovingly to many, such as Zacchaeus and changed his life completely. We must be about our Father’s business.
“The one who loves, gives to God and to others”. Pope Francis January 2014