Father Thomas Welbers' Homily

Last week we heard Jesus, on the night before died, tell his closest friends – and us, for we too are his closest friends . . . Last week we heard Jesus saying to us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let your faith in me be shaken.” This week, in very next words after last week’s Gospel, Jesus gives the other side of the faith that overcomes fear, and that “other side” is love.

We just heard him assuring us of his presence in the power of the Holy Spirit, that he will not leave us bereft and alone, but that we will be in him just as he is in God the Father. Do we really believe that? When you are busily engaged in all the things that make up the events and activities of your life, do you realize that Jesus is right there doing them along with you? When you are thinking and talking about people, for good or for ill – Jesus is right there, loving you. When you are deciding what to do, whether out of generosity or selfishness – Jesus is right there loving you. When you are struggling with temptations – overcoming them or yielding to them – Jesus is right there, loving you. Is that too much to believe? Do we sometimes, or maybe frequently, forget this because it’s too wonderful? Perhaps too unbelievable? Or perhaps, do we forget this because we’re more interested in other things?

God’s unconditional love for you and for me, which Jesus came to reveal to us both by his words and his saving and healing actions, does not depend on whether we deserve it or not, whether we have earned it or not, nor even whether we are good or not. God first loved us, as the first letter of John in the New Testament (1 John 4:19) proclaims, and Fr. Tony Campbell’s book of a couple of years ago continues to remind us. We find that hard to believe because so much of our experience of human love is conditioned upon behavior – even parental love so often has its limits, as the prevalence of neglect and abuse in our society bears ample witness.

This is why Jesus changed the “Great Commandment” of the Old Testament from the twofold “Love God above all things, and love your neighbor as yourself” to his own New Commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

First, our human love for ourselves is often deficient. Either we come down on ourselves, and fail to see ourselves with the same eyes of love with which God sees us, or we mistake pleasure, comfort and self-indulgence for love, and do things that are ultimately harmful, thinking that we are being good to ourselves. If we are honest with ourselves, we are not very good models for how to love others, are we? That’s why Jesus proposes himself as our model. You want to learn how to love truly? Look at the cross and learn from him.

Secondly, Jesus combines love of God and love of neighbor into one commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.” When we love each other in this way, we are loving God the way God wants to be loved; and when we fail to love one another, to that extent we are failing to respond in kind to the love that God has for us. Our failures do not diminish God’s love for us; but we cannot claim to love God in return if we ignore our neighbor or refuse to be generous in loving each other as God is generous in loving us.

St. Peter in the second reading tells us to “be always ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks the reason for our hope.” When people question us about our faith, particularly if they see that our lives and our actions match our beliefs and our words, all we need to say is this: “God loved me first, and unconditionally. Trying to show that kind of love in the way I live is the least I can do to show my appreciation for what God continues to do for me.”

© 2005 Thomas Welbers