Sixth Sunday of Easter

Dear friends in Christ, today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter and our Gospel is from John 15: 9-17. Here, we learn that Jesus said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” With these, I ask, can we force ourselves to love someone? If not, then why Jesus has to command us to love one another? Well, in this Gospel, Jesus has revealed to us that love is not just a mere feeling or emotion as we usually believe it to be. He has qualified love when He commanded as to love one another as an act of the will. It means then that when we love, it is not based on just our feeling although it is accompanied with our feelings. When we love, it shall be rooted in our will which we submit to Jesus who wills us to love one another. Such kind of love is what everybody needs and everybody must have. For married couples, they sometimes experience a lull or dull moments in their married life. They think they have lost their love. Well, it may happen that between the husband and wife, their romantic feelings may have been gone, but it is their will to love each other that matters in order to keep their marriage. For some children, they think their parents do not love them. Well, it is possible that parents have not shown a loving gesture toward their children but we can sense their will to love them. Why should their parents send them to school? Why do their parents scold them when they become unruly? On the part of the parents, there is the will to love. With this kind of love, Jesus then has given us what it can do by saying, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends.” It is an act of the will in accordance to the will of God that one can give his/her life for the sake of another. It is an act of the will for a husband or a wife to spend all his/her life with his/her spouse. It is an act of the will to obey and respect one’s parents too. This act of the will in accordance with the will of God is called love. It is loving the other even if he/she feels hurt for being unloved in return.

To end, I remember sometime in 2004, I was bombarded with a series of problems. Intrigues and false accusations were thrown against me inside and outside the church arena. I admit, I made many mistakes in the past that hurt many. All the problems then were just part of the consequences of my good and bad actions toward those people. (Note: Even until now I believe I commit more mistakes.) It was the time when I felt I could not defend myself because I could not see the attacks coming. During those times I hid myself in pain. I only had the chance to stand again when in one occasion, I learned that my best friend Fr. Glenn told one person who brought him some bad news about me with these words, “I know Jude, and I love him.” In another occasion, I regained my confidence when Fr. Kenn, my long-time best friend, told me with these similar wordings, “Jude, I could not see what they have seen against you.” These experience of being loved by a friend brought me to the place where I am now. Their love is not based on feelings but on their will to accept me as who I am and not as what people expect me to be. It is with this experience that I understand why Jesus has to command us all to love one another because love can make a difference in our lives. Amen.