Whenever one hears of Mother Teresa, often she is thought of in terms of her social work. She committed herself to caring for the less fortunate. She worked diligently each and every day making sure that the poor were provided for, whether it was in trying to provide medical care, food and water to them. She spent so much time doing this that the world at large still marvels at what she was able to achieve. What if I told you, though, that she wanted to be more than a social worker? What if I told you she wanted to be someone known for her love? Listen to this quote from her:
“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”
Think about what she just said- to be unloved is the greatest and most painful experience- more painful than being hungry. It’s rather astonishing to think that way, isn’t it? What if there is truth in this, though? What if it is more painful to be unloved than to be unfed? Human experience often doesn’t seem to give us much experience in this way… or does it?
Imagine putting yourself in a situation where you did in fact feel unwanted, or unloved, uncared for or forgotten. All of those things can be very heavy- but what would happen if they had occurred to us? Or perhaps there are those places in our life where we might feel it in smaller or greater ways- that we are feeling that we aren’t loved as we like or we aren’t cared for or are forgotten- in those moments, does faith have an answer, and also a challenge for us to consider?
The first reading, as we continue our journey through the Acts of the Apostles, has us situated in a dialogue, instead of Peter’s public proclamations. This is a conversation that is taking place between Peter and Cornelius. A vision had told Cornelius to seek Peter out, and this happened after Peter had a vision of his own- one that had shown him that all things- and people- were indeed clean. This moment was a very important one to Peter, because Cornelius was a Gentile who was uncircumcised. So, the Jews would have never ordinarily associated with him. However, God made it very clear that this was a time of change- and the Gentiles were also being called into relationship with God. So, Peter announces such as he encounters this new faith and the Holy Spirit flows into them- and then Peter instructs that all of these believers should now be baptized. The Lord has indeed revealed Himself to His people- but it isn’t enough to say just that. The Lord has revealed to all nations his saving power- and that is a beautiful realization that Peter has, and shares with the other disciples.
The second reading continues the first letter of Saint John. He calls out his reader- let us love one another because love is of God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. To further demonstrate the point, John lays out that love has been revealed to us- and the way that God loves us as well- we see that God sent His son into the world to save it! Further, there must be the revelation that love is not that we have first loved God- but that He first loved us and worked towards our salvation, even while we were not worth of such a profound gift. He sent His son anyways to save us from our sin!
Finally we move on to the Gospel- and we hear Jesus start with this: “As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” Last week, we were encouraged to consider how to remain in relationship with Christ, and this week it has moved on to us considering how that relationship offers us something that is going to build us up- namely love. He goes one step further and lays out exactly what our love should cause us to do and how our love should be manifested- our love should be manifested by the way that we keep the commandments, just as the Son has kept the commandments of the Father- and as a result has remained in Him as well.
One might have a question that has developed now- why should we choose to remain in this love? Christ, as if to anticipate our question. He says that He has told us this that we may have joy and that our joy might be complete. So, naturally the love of Christ is going to cause us joy- or at least it should. Then he doubles down on this statement by adding this: no one has greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. This should automatically get our attention- because Christ has laid down his own life for us. Then, He also retitles His disciples- they are not slaves, but they are rather His friends- because a slave does not know what their master does. Jesus describes His relationship with disciples as a friendship. Further, this is a friendship that is freely offered to us- he reminds us that it was not us who first chose Him, but He who chose us- and appointed us to go and bear fruit. The final line of this gospel- this I command you- love one another.
This I command you: love one another.
Note that all of the work that we could do- all of the great and tremendous things that we can accomplish in this life- Christ has given us one fundamental thing to do: love.
To make this possible however, it becomes important that we consider a few things that happen on our faith journey. First- do we, as sons and daughters of God, feel loveable? Do we feel that we could be called into relationship with God our Father- and Christ His Son? This may seem like an obvious answer, but there are ways that this simple fact can be forgotten. Perhaps we don’t care. We have other things going on in life- other positions, other things that make us feel important- so we don’t really find ourselves thinking about God’s love all that much. In the grand scheme of things, we start to treat our relationship with God as transactional- that He becomes nothing more than a magician, who gets us out of tough situations when we can’t ourselves do that.
The second possibility is that we start to think we are not deserving of His love. We think about all of the ways that we have failed. How we have done things that make us “undeserving” of God’s love- or at least that’s what we begin to think. We do not let ourselves be loved- and therefore we start to become very cold and callous ourselves. We must realize- we have done nothing to deserve God’s love- He chose us first. He sent His Son to give us a chance at salvation- we didn’t nor could we have ever done anything to deserve such a gift!
Then, this moves into a second question- have we committed ourselves to loving Christ? Remember, Christ doesn’t just say for us to love in this indiscriminate and undetermined way. We are to keep His commandments. We are to imitate Him in the docility that we have to the will of the Father. We should lay down our lives like He has for our friends. Yet, do we do that? He has given us tasks to do! He wants us to act in our love for Him!
Then, the final thing for us to consider today- do we commit ourselves to loving one another as Christ has commanded us? Likely, we are good at loving those we want to- but what about those that we’d rather not love? What about those people that just get on our nerves time and time again? Or, maybe most of the time we are good at loving others, but whenever we are having a lousy day- we all of a sudden aren’t that loving towards others- and as a result we can be very cruel and mean in the way we interact with others?
Perhaps a good point of homework for each of us to pray with this week- where is that one relationship in our life that needs love, right here and right now? Who is that one person who is grinding your gears? Where is that person that annoys you the most? Are you committed to loving that person, as Christ has commanded us to do? Perhaps each of us have some work to do here!
Mother Teresa, as great as she was, was not just renowned for her ability to organize social work. Even the government can do something that mundane to a greater or lesser extend. What truly set her apart was her ability to make someone feel wanted loved, cared for, and that they were not forgotten. That is what truly set her apart. In today’s world- we live in a sea of countless people that feel these ways- whether they admit to it or not.
When we look at her example- and Christ’s command: love one another, what is your and my response going to be? Will we chose to love one another?
