Good Friday (C) 4/14/95



5th Sunday in Easter (C) 05/19/2019

Love, as the Divine spirit/Christ lives it, is availability and receptivity. Another word that can be used is tolerance. There are many examples in our daily lives of intolerance, but few of tolerance. We see intolerance as we drive. We meet it in the world of politics. We hear or read about it when people kill or maim other people. We experience it when people are excluded because of religious beliefs.

There was a time in my life when I felt hurt by another who I had trusted as a friend. The stinging hurt that I felt remained with me. I just couldn’t get past it. Suspicion was a closer friend to me than trust, so feeling that my trust had been betrayed, felt bigger than it was. We remained friends but mostly at a guarded distance. This (I suspect) is as far as we can get as humans (i.e. remaining friendly at a guarded distance).

John’s Gospel speaks from the perspective of Christ and not the historical Jesus. We – relying only on our limited resources – can’t love in the way that Christ in today’s Gospel commands us to love. We can’t make ourselves that available. We can’t get beyond the hurt. We need to protect our fragile selves. All of which is true.

As we learn to live (and this can be a somewhat painful struggle) in the love of Christ we discover – every so often – ourselves remaining more available and receptive than protective and intolerant. This doesn’t mean that we become ‘punching bags’. Rather, it means that we are more tolerant. We stop living the lie that violence can eliminate violence.

Eventually, my bruised friendship found a way to be reconciled. I discovered – at some point – that I had stopped carrying the hurt and the mistrust; I stopped feeling the hurt. I had outgrown it.

The new commandment that we hear Christ give to us in today’s Gospel isn’t like the Ten Commandments. We can’t make ourselves keep this new commandment. It can only happen to us, and it begins when we are surprised to recognize Christ dwelling in ourselves, and further surprised to also recognize Christ dwelling in others. Our eyes being opened is such a gift, and a gift that we cannot carry by ourselves. It is a gift that must be shared with others. Saint Paul calls it ‘the weight of eternity’. It is a weight that can only be tolerated by community.

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