How to Love

Gospel: John 14: 15-21

Throughout the Gospels, and particularly in today's portion, Jesus says again and again that the way to eternal life is through obeying his commandments.  His commandments are the commandments of love: love God, love neighbor, love one another as I have loved you.  On the one hand, this list of commandments is much simpler than the 612 commandments in the Law.  On the other hand, we might well wonder what love looks like.  How are we to carry it out in our lives?

We get an answer today from the first reading.  Philip, one of the first followers of Jesus, is going about from town to town healing paralytics and cripples, while also freeing those gripped by their demons.  Philip is going about doing the very things Jesus did in his life while on earth: healing people, liberating them from their demons, and feeding them at table.  The entire Acts of the Apostles is an attempt to show how the first Christians attempted to live as Jesus did, following the Way of Love.

In our own life we must be about these same things in order to follow the commandments of love and the example Jesus gave us.  We must be about healing people, liberating them from their demons, and feeding people at table.  Church life is not about liturgy committee meetings or athletic leagues or even maintaining buildings.  It is about this work of Jesus and his first followers: the works of mercy, the works of healing, liberating, and feeding, the way of Love.