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SCRIPTURE
READINGS
|
Acts |
10:25-26,
34-35, 44-48 |
| Psalm |
97 |
| I
John |
4:7-10
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| John |
15:9-17 |
‘God
is love'. This is the simple yet profound message
of today's Gospel. It is also the title of our Holy
Father Pope Benedict's first Encyclical Letter addressed
to Catholics across the world in which he impresses
on us the deeply passionate love which has been
poured out for us through the gift of Christ Jesus.
So this Sunday it is worth returning to this deeply
spiritual letter to reflect on what the Pope has
to say to us.
For
Pope Benedict the love God has for us in Christ
is the fullest expression of the drama of human
desire and of unconditional love, or as the Pope
terms it of love as eros and love as agape
. Eros love represents human longing,
passionate desire for the beloved. Agape
is the culmination and perfection of that desire
in the unconditional sacrifice of Christ on the
cross. The drama of agape and eros
love has its fulfillment in the Easter mystery,
the self-gift of the Lover for his beloved, that
is of our Lord for his people whom he desires to
draw to himself to such an extent he goes all the
way to his cross in order to rise again for our
salvation.
Let
us consider eros first. In purely human
terms eros love can be grasping, clinging,
selfish loving. Benedict, however, rehabilitates
this deeply human love as, through the gift of the
incarnation, we see this movement within the very
being of God himself. The love of desire, says the
Pope, is the love of the Word made flesh in Jesus
Christ, who is ‘a lover with all the passion of
a true love'.
What
does this mean for us? It means two things. Firstly,
it reminds us that God in Christ knows the deepest
yearnings of he human heart, of our desire to give
ourselves. He knows the love which yearns for the
beloved. This makes him fully human like us.
Yet,
secondly, in revealing his humanity, it also calls
us forward and outside of ourselves. It reveals
to us our own divine destiny as creatures made in
his image. We are called to union with the God who
truly became one like us in all things except sin.
Our Lord's passionate desire for us finds its fullest
expression as it is transformed into the perfection
of loving, agape , the love which leads
to the sacrifice of one's very self for one's beloved.
To allow desire to be transformed into self-gift,
eros into agape , is to be obedient
to our divine calling to become more like Christ.
Wherever
we are in our lives we can always strive that our
desires are transformed into more selfless loving.
We can always love more as Christ did because, inheriting
original sin, we miss the big picture and turn in
on ourselves. We can give more time to family, be
less self-serving at work, more aware of the world
outside my selfish comfort zones. We need again,
in this Easter season, to hear of God's love for
us in the self-gift of Our Lord, and to recommit
ourselves to becoming more like him. And if we desire
to be like him the Holy Spirit will move our desires
to be transformed more closely into the perfect
love he bestowed on us in the gift of his very self.
Fr
Dominic Robinson SJ
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