Fifth Sunday of Easter (3)

I give new Commandment, Love one another AS I Love you.

Love air breath IS= NOT

Each breath comes in through nose

often comes w/ smell

good easy breath bad hard

baked apple pie, nostalgic scent of old, roses

not only easy might try to breath deeper

rotting garbage or clogged pipe

barely want air

likewise poisoned air can smell very sweet,

smell not only not breath

doesnt always tell if air good not

Like smell is not breathing, neither feelings love

feelings easier harder

but neither love nor tell u if real love or poisonous

acts love often motivated and come w/ feeling,

but not feeling

Impossible:

fall in love

be tempted by love

fall out of love

attractive ugly, familiar stranger, friend enemy

can make harder or easier,

but nothing to do love

alot of feelings around love, love not feeling

Love is to will, and Love of God is to will the Good.

God wouldnt command a feeling

Know love God neighbor

God above all, and neighbor as self

so willing good neighbor as our good

But Christ asks more than love neighbor as self

asks more than will good neighbor as self

This NEW love neighbor

St. Cyril of Alexandria: “law of Moses...loving our brothers as ourselves....more than we love ourselves”

doing well if Moses, but much more

love AS Christ:

left throne bliss

allowed torture of self he could stopped with a thought

God’s love not that of cosmic teddy bear)

sometimes fluffy warm some teeth

nice

saved adulteress, uplifted tax collector, embraced lepers

mean

condemned, whipped, said things drove even believers away

That love AS Christ

did all that for those

hated him; or

barely loved back; and

not at all worthy

Conclusion:

Do we falsely confuse loving neighbor with warm feelings?

confuse breath with smells?

what smells attract us wrong or repulse us wrongly

Love others like Christ?

pouring it out rain on good and bad,

where we sacrificial rain

will good (soft and hard) always even at our expense

May he make of us an offering to God and others.

May we love

not in pathetic trivial way world loves, but How love Himself does POINT CROSS.

Note

Me

“This is how all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

note how it is new ‘love AS I HAVE loved you”

how does he:

St. Cyril Alexandria: “law of Moses...loving our brothers as ourselves....more than we love ourselves”

St. Augustine: not carnal love but love as children of God. Must be understood with First commandment (works together).

like a physician loves health in the sick, so we love God in neighbor, not what is contrary to God in them

Sacrificial love

risk hated by ones trying to help

lower self to help raise them

True love

aim at good, not their pleasure

soul over material wellbeing

either theirs or their own physical well being

True Love of Neighbor is Hate of what hurts them.

if one follows Moses on “as oneself” one does better than most all since most prefer self, but Christ asks for even more.

Commentators

Pitre

context is last supper

St. Cassian “our predecessors always held that monks were neither good nor free of vainglory if they proclaimed before men that they were exorcists and if, filled with assertive pride, they proclaimed to admiring crowds that they had this gift, which they had either earned or had grabbed”

St. Augustine Good but doesn’t pertain: “

Saint Augustine: Tractates on the Gospel of John, 112–24; Tractates on the First Epistle of John Tractate 10

We sigh here over the difficulty of keeping a commandment of God. Hear what follows. From loving what do you exert effort? From loving avarice. With effort what you love is loved; without effort God is loved. Avarice will order efforts, dangers, chafing trials, tribulations, and you will obey. To what end? That you may have that from which you may fill your money box [and] lose your freedom from anxiety. Perhaps you were freer from anxiety before you had than when you began to have. See what orders avarice has imposed upon you. You have filled your house; robbers are feared. You have acquired gold; you have lost sleep. See what orders avarice has imposed upon you. Do, and you did. What order does God impose upon you? “Love me. You love gold, you will seek gold, and perhaps you will not find it. Whoever seeks me, I am with him. You will love honor, and perhaps you will not attain it. Who has loved me and has not attained me?” God says to you, “You wish to make [someone] a patron or a powerful friend to you; you solicit him through someone else inferior. Love me,” God says to you, “there is no soliciting of me through anyone; love itself makes me present to you.”