A couple came to the rectory awhile ago - a very nice and courteous couple, even though you could sense they were stern. They came to present a very large book to someone they thought would be sympathetic, someone who respected the pope and was unafraid to speak about sin. “I still believe in the old faith,” one of them said. “The old faith,” I asked, “What old faith?” “I mean our faith before they started talking about love all the time. There was right and wrong and punishment. There was fear of God and the following of the law. Since Vatican II and the theology of love, everything has been watered down and made easy.”

My heart went out to them but it was with sadness. “Well,” I said, “when do you think the love stuff started? Don’t you think Jesus talked about love?” One of the said there was a place for love, but in these days it had taken over everything and made a mess of the church.” I felt somewhat discouraged after the meeting was over. It seemed that this good couple had missed so much. Yet they were trying to reach for a truth.

As for love, the Gospels and the Epistles would fall into a million pieces without love. Our saints would be incomprehensible without love. There would be no heroes in our lives without love. Even Jesus would not be... “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son...” - no love - no Jesus. It was not the Second Vatican Council that said, “Love is of God. Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God for God is love. Love then consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us and has sent his son as an offering for our sins.” That quote was not from the documents of the Second Vatican Council - that passage came for the First Letter of St. John. How could we ever imagine a Christianity without love as its center?

The love that God’s Word describes is not primarily our love of God but God’s love for us. Jesus, in the gospel today calls us to live in that love. We too easily think of love in a simplistic, romantic, one sided way. But this command of Jesus contains the most important challenge of the whole Gospel and like the deepest part of the gospel to which it is linked, the Crucifixion, it is very, very difficult to imitate. Why? It is easy to consider ourselves as loving if we only look at one side of things, namely, how we related to those people who are loving, warm, respectful and gracious towards us. If we rate ourselves on how we feel about ourselves in our best moments among like-minded friends, we can easily conclude both that we are loving persons and that we are measuring up to Jesus’ command to love as he did.

But what about the people who hate us, whom we don’t like? What about the people whom we avoid and who avoid us? What about those people towards whom we feel resentment? What about all those people with whom we are at odds, towards whom we feel suspicion, coldness, anger? What about those people whom we haven’t been able to forgive? It is one thing to love someone who adores you, it is quite another to love someone who wants you dead! But that is the real test. Jesus’ command to love contains a critical clause, “as I have loved you!” Where Jesus stretches us beyond our natural instincts is in his command to love our enemies, to be warm to those who are cold to us, to be kind to those who are cruel to us, to do good to those who hate us, to forgive those who hurt us, to forgive those who will not forgive us, and to ultimately love and forgive those who are trying to kill us.

If there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend, then I must respond to Jesus’ command by asking myself: what part of my life must “I lay down,” let die, for the sake of another? My prejudice, my unwillingness to help, my angry feelings, envy of what others have, the list of wrongs I keep against a person. Jesus does not give a list of commandments we can check off one by one and then say, “There, I have done that.” Instead he gives a much broader commandment: “love one another as I have loved you.” Can we ever say we have lived up to that command? Love is a fire that consumes us. Leaves us looking for ways to love and no one can spell out rules and regulations for us. We should not delude ourselves on this. The gospel is uncompromising: We are loving or non-loving not on the basis of how we respond to those who love us, but on the basis of how we respond to those who hate us, and are cold, hostile toward us. That is the hard, nonnegotiable truth underlying Jesus command to love and when we are honest, we have to admit that we are still a long ways from measuring up to that. And that is why we gather at the table of the Lord . The Bread of Life - the Food of Love challenges and nourishes us. Let us eat what we are and what we are to become - the loving Body of Christ in our world.