This is the message you have heard from the beginning:
we should love one another
Why circle back again to this message? No doubt those to whom John wrote this letter were eager for lofty revelations and desired to plumb deep theological depths. We can imagine Christians in our own day setting aside this 'love one another' because it seems in some ways to be so basic, and not even necessarily distinctively Christian. We can even recognize that we ourselves sometimes seem to prefer to reading about theology to actually putting this teaching into practice. Even genuine goods such as the reading of Scripture, the practice of prayer, and our attending the sacraments would be fragmentary and disjointed if it were not leading us back to this 'love one another'. This thing which seems to us to be the most basic, the starting place for the Christian life, turns out to also be the most advanced, and without which all else risks collapsing into hypocrisy.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (see John 13:35).
Christians sometimes risk thinking they are acting in love only because they often speak about love. But love that is word or speech alone is not love, and it does not attain to the heights that love alone can reach. Talk, as they say, is cheap. It will not help a brother in need if we refuse to allow God to act and help that brother through us.
If someone who has worldly means
sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion,
how can the love of God remain in him?
The love of God, beyond all words, was poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (see Romans 5:5). But if we stop up the flow of the Spirit we will find ourselves without his help, just as the man who was entrusted with the one talent but did not put it to work lost what he had been given. By contrast, if we let the Spirit himself flow by allowing him to work through us we will find him within us in ever greater abundance.
The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (see John 4:14).
It is love itself that characterizes eternal life. This is not primarily because Peter stands as a gatekeeper like some sort of Santa figure determining if we were naughty or nice. It is rather because, as we will read later, "God is love". He himself is a dynamic interchange of loving communion. And the only life that truly lasts forever is found in him, united with him. We either begin to live this life here and now by letting his love flow through us or else we begin the process of rejecting him even now, which, if we do not repent, might one day be finalized at our death, God forbid.
Love is about more than loving those who are easy to love. It is about being prepared to love even those who hate us. Like Abel and like Jesus himself we may find ourselves persecuted for our righteousness out of the envy of the world. The temptation to which Cain succumbed is actually still all too possible for those who refuse to repent and rely on God's assistance. It is in fact a temptation that is still possible even for those who are Christians, that of envy, whether material or spiritual, and that of hatred. But if we begin to see such things characterize our lives let us turn back to the word we heard from the beginning and to the God who alone can empower us to live it.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn
Even if we still find ourselves in some measure worthy of condemnation, still broken in many ways, if we see God's love working through us to help others we can be confident that we are in fact headed in the right direction, however slowly, and believe that God is willing and able to bring the good work begun in us to completion (see Philippians 1:6).
And he said to him, "Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see the sky opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves, just as he knew Nathanael. He can show us a new and higher vision for our lives than any we can imagine for ourselves. His vantage point makes him uniquely able to do this because he himself is the spot where heaven meets earth, the dwelling place of God in the flesh. He desires to help us more and more come to know what love is so that he can raise us us transformed to walk in newness of life with him.
For on the feast of this awe-filled mystery,though invisible in his own divine nature,he has appeared visibly in ours;and begotten before all ages, he has begun to exist in time;so that, raising up in himself all that was cast down,he might restore unity to all creation andcall straying humanity back to the heavenly Kingdom
- Preface II of the Nativity
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