6th Sunday of Easter May 5, 2024

Readings: Acts 10.25-26, 34-35, 44-48, 1John 4.7-10, John 15, 9-7

Today in the Gospel Reading, our Lord began his exhortation with the commandment to love and ended with that. We must not there take it lightly. Hence we are called upon to attend to this commandment of loving one another as he loved us. Practically, this calls for the breaking down of the walls of enmity, the walls of hatred, the walls of apathy, the walls of disunity, the walls of xenophobia and the walls of segregation that has torn families, communities, races, and nations apart. To love is thus not an option but a grave duty we must perform. In fact it is a necessity and we have no excuse not to love as without love we have no business with God.

It will also very pertinent to ask why our Lord was making so much emphasis on: “loving one another as he loved us” and even making it a commandment not a suggestion. The reason is not far from the fact that there is a great incidence of lack of love in our world. Furthermore, the lack of love is brought about by the increase in the rate of wickedness in the world (see Matt.24:12). Looking at this closely too, we discover that people become wicked because self-interest and selfishness that is the simple reason why love is fundamentally selfless.

When our Lord Jesus Christ said love one another, he was thus saying that we should stop being wicked, we should stop being selfish. He was saying that we should adopt utter generosity, care, and kindness to all irrespective of differences of backgrounds and dispositions. Love is actually the fundamental phenomenon that drives the Christian life. Hence without love there will definitely be no Christianity. The message today is clear, we must love and not hate just as God continuously and continually love us.

Fr. Terry.