God is love. If we are going to make a summary of what the Bible says from the Old Testament to New Testament, we get this simple message “God is love.” God created the world out of love. When sin entered the world, God still loved the world. For He so loved the world that He gave us His only son Jesus Christ to redeem the world. Moreover, God sent Jesus not only to show how He loved us but also to teach us how to love Him and our fellow men. Jesus gave us the greatest commandments, i.e., to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Now in the Gospel of John 14:15-21 Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” He just reiterates to us the importance of love. We obey Jesus because we love Him and we love others because it is His commandments. He means that we have to live in love and acts with love. In short, in all things we have to show love. By saying this we are reminded by the Church to undergo a formation of our hearts. We have to train our hearts to love or at least to be loving in our ways.
If we only notice, we created noble professions for the service of man. We have doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, etc. But before one can engage in any specific profession, he or she must undergo a formation or training. After some years of training, one has to pass the board exam or bar to be admitted to the chosen profession. Thus we have produced many doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, etc. who are experts in their field. However, seldom can we find doctors, nurses, engineers, or lawyers who are loving in their ways as they deal with people. Doctors would prescribe some medicine to their patients without showing any care. Nurses would check their patients but they do not bother to listen to their cries. Lawyers would treat their clients depending on the clients’ financial capacity to pay them. We have professionals who are trained intellectually but they treat people as objects. This is so because they are not trained to love or to be loving. This is ironic because most of the professionals are Catholics in our country. They suppose to show love in everything they do. But we have to accept the fact that to be a Catholic is separate from being a lawyer, a nurse, or a doctor in our present setting. That is why it is not surprising that a politician once declared “I am a congressman who is a Catholic but I am not a Catholic congressman.” It means I can choose to love or not as I can choose to be a congressman, a lawyer, a doctor or not. This should not be the case! The message of our Gospel is plain and clear. Whether one is a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer or not, he/she must love or be loving as he/she is a Catholic –a lover of Jesus Christ. In saying that we love Jesus, we become Catholics. Being Catholics, we must love and show love in all our ways. Amen.
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