Word of the Week

6th Sunday in Easter

Love: Agape (Gk.): meaning “brotherly love, affection, good will, love, benevolence”

“Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC 1822). Jesus makes this the new commandment by which we participate in the loved shared between the father and the Son (CCC, 1823).

Love can be found over 800 times in Sacred Scripture. No one word has captured the imagination of biblical authorship more than love--“ever ancient ever new”, no doubt because “God is love” (1 Jn.4:8, 16). In this brief reflection, I will focus on the aforementioned Greek, agape, used 116 times in the New Testament, as it describes our call to abide in the love shared between the Father and the Son by laying our life down for one’s friends (cf. Jn.15:9-17).

The Jewish roots of Christianity in the story of Abraham, provides for us that forecasting of the kind of love we would see emanating from the relationship shared between the Father and the Son (Gn.22:1-18). Abraham, as patriarchal mediator of the old covenant, willingly offered his son Isaac, whom he loved (Gn.22.2) (first time you see love in Scripture) as a sacrifice to God in the name of obedience. We know from the story in Genesis that God intervened, Isaac was spared, and because of Abraham’s obedience, his descendents “will multiply greater than the stars on heaven and as the sand which is on th seashore” (Gn.22:17). God following through on his promise, offers his own son as a priest/king mediator of the new covenant that our spiritual inheritance would be complete. By way of the sacrament of Baptism, man, receives the spiritual blessing of inheritance promised long ago through Abraham’s line, which is completed in Christ. 

“You are my friends if you do what I command you” (Jn.15:14). Christ calls us his friend if we abide in his love (Jn.15:10-14). In other words, Christ calls us his friend if we willingly lay down our life for our brothers and sisters in Christ. As noted last week in the teaching bulletin, abide speaks directly to the call to patiently persevere in doing the will of Christ for the sake of the Body of Christ. Christ teaches us that fraternal love is defined by the gift of sacrifice. Recall, that Abraham was the first to be called God’s friend because of his loving adherence to God’s command (2 Chr.20:7; Is.41:8) (Hahn and Minch, 47).

Paul reminds us that love is the greatest of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and the foundation that all other virtues rest (1 Cor.13:13). So it is, we do not see Christ’s command as something negative, rather an opportunity for sanctity and personal holiness. For this reason, our very beings ought to be grafted to Christ. Like an adhesive, we need to stick to the Father’s game plan in running the race to the end. What a joy it must be, to come out on the other side celebrating with the family of God the victory already won in Christ. Let us not resist the grace of God, but abide in it, drawing source from the gift of friendship we have with Christ and one another.

“Love of neighbor is shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern.”

--Pope Benedict XVI

Primary Texts Consulted

Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.
Hahn, Scott and Minch, Curtis. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The Gospel of John, RSV, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003.

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