The struggle of love

"...By this love you have for one another, everyone will know you are my disciple". 

The Priest stands in silence for awhile, hands together, eyes closed, head bowed; he then looks up and says "The Gospel of the Lord", he bows down to kiss the Gospel while echoing throughout the Church, everyone  says "Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ" and everyone sits down. 

-----------------------------------------------------------

 By this love you have for one another, everyone will know you are my disciple. 

Those words kept playing over and over again in my head. "Everyone will know you are my disciple". Looking back a few sentences, Jesus exclaims 

"...love one another, just as I have loved you, you must also love one another."

By reading these lines itself, the challenge by Jesus poses by itself, and that comes in the form of one simple yet powerful word: love.

Love is a struggle, because, love is not merely a feeling of affection or care, on the contrary, love encompasses action, thoughts and moreover, sacrifice. It's a package of multiple feelings that are in place that is complemented together with the outward action. 

Thousands if not millions of people have dwelt with the topic of love. In his latest exhortation itself by His Holiness Pope Francis, the word "love" appears almost 540 times. The emphasis of love from the Christian perspective is the core and primary value of our faith, because it was through love that we exist this very day. 

The challenge of love is a difficult challenge, we cannot call ourselves a Christian, or a Jesus-loving-person if we lack love. Love not only for God, but for other people. The challenge comes when we have to constantly reflect and imitate the love we have for God by the actions, thoughts and feelings we have for others. 

God is never physically present in our midst, save for the Eucharist, he can never intervene directly in our lives, most of the time; and that is where God through his love puts us in a community with others. By placing us in the midst of other people; this is where we can experience the love of God and at the same time share His love to others. The love of God comes from the people around us, whom loves us and care for us; our supporters and those who encourage us. Despite this, we sometimes find it very difficult to acknowledge the love these people have for us. The ones we call "loved-ones" tend to be part of the reflection of God's love for us. Though imperfect as they are, they play a part in God's love for us by giving to us what is necessary and provident. 

The greater struggle is to have the same kind of love, towards the people whom we call our "enemies", if that's such a strong word, then to those people we aren't in favour of, despise, or sometimes out-right abhor. Yet, if we call ourselves a believer of Christ, we can make no room for this kind of negativity towards them. That's the struggle we face as humans. By saying this, I don't mean we have to treat them the same way we treat our "loved-ones", rather, we have to treat them the way that God would, and that's through forgiveness and mercy. 

How can we?

It's difficult. To see the person who isn't inclined to follow the rules; or to see a person who goes all out in hurting others, how can we love them? We can't. 

In a human way, we simply can't put aside our feelings and immediately give them the love we have in ourselves. The Christian challenge comes in when, we have to remind ourselves that they deserve what is due. This means, seeing as to why they do what they do. Furthermore, by seeing this, the heart of mercy has to come enter into us, by going the further step and journeying with them to provide the love of God that they deserve. 

For other to know that one is a disciple comes from the way we treat others, from the littlest things to the major sacrifices we make. This not necessarily comes only by actions towards them, but also our thoughts and perspective of them, how we gossip and slander about them and also our prayers for them. It's easier putting on a show towards the people we dislike, the refugees or asylum-seekers in our country, those people considered "lower" than us in a social-standpoint and help them. But like said before, love isn't just the action, it encompasses everything that we feel, and believe. 

As hard as it is, 

"Love always has an aspect of deep compassion that leads to accepting the other person as part of this world, even when he or she acts differently than I would like." - Amoris Laetitia, 92.

On not recognising the ones we know.

Picture this:

You know a close male friend who has almost shoulder length hair, he has an easily recognisable goatee and a stubble all over his cheek right to his chin, he wears those rounded-frame glasses and has a stud ear ring on his right ear. 

Passing by, people would tend to say he looks rather shabby and scruffy, some would nod and approve it as a hipster look, and finally some might find it unclean. 

Then the same guy friend, with you having no knowledge of it, decides to cut his hair, go clean shaven, replaces his glasses with a slimmer and slightly horn-rimmed frame one and remove his ear ring. Lastly, he decides to wear a long sleeve fitting t-shirt tucked in into slacks. 

He comes to you, and starts waving from a distance, wide-smiled and the first thing that comes to your mind is "Who is that?!", you smile back being friendly, as he approaches you start to think and recall that you've seen this person before, but can't place him anywhere; he finally stands right in front of you, and asks you, "Are you okay?". You finally give out a loud laugh and tell yourself how foolish you are by not even recognising your own friend. 

---------------------------------------------

When Jesus was risen from the dead, there were more than one time that the His disciples were oblivious to his physical presence. (Just take a look at Mark 16:9-14, the infamous walk to Emmaus in Luke 24:13 - 33 and even in today's Gospel of John 21:1-14). It comes to mind then, what made them blind to see the one whom they love so much literally appear in front of them and yet the couldn't even recognise Him?

After the death of Jesus, the followers scattered and some might even lose hope, despite Him promising eternal life to them. Knowing that He had died brings grief and a sense of predicament to the followers as to why a person who claims to be the Son of God and more importantly the Messiah would abandon them and leave them in the same state that they were. Even those closest to Him such as his dear apostles too, went back to their previous lives. 

By them not recognising the risen Lord, shows that even the Apostles and closest followers of Jesus at a time lost faith in Him; lose their confidence in the Risen Lord and were mourning so much that it made them blind when He was standing in front of them. 

This then brings us to ourselves. Like the apostles who couldn't recognise Jesus after His resurrection, how often are we blind to the goodness of others. The risen Christ is analogous to the goodness of the people around us. We are thought to see Christ in all that we do, and in all that we meet; how then are we sometimes oblivious to the things that they do in His name. 

---------------------------------------------

In dealing with the everyday world, we often find that goodness and kindness and mercy, hard to come by. We are blinded by the stain of being judgmental and moreover the prejudice of someone we already detest. By doing so, we are not only losing our faith in Christ and others, but also putting a stint on His love for us by not radiating the grace which He has given. 

This is definitely easier said than actually doing it. Recognising the good in others is a challenge we all face; in fact for example, there are many times where our civil leaders put on a show and facade of charity only to be swindling our money, or when a lay Church leader praying fervently and only to find him rushing out of Mass while cussing; away from that, worse of all is to see sometimes the people to whom we are closest to, becoming someone we don't recognise, someone whom we fear and as much as it hurts to draw away from them. Despite that, the faith we have in Christ should always be open and to recognise the goodness that they still have. 

-------------------------------------

The cheeks on the apostles' face could have hurt greatly upon seeing the Christ in their midst again. What joy it must have been to them to have breakfast with Him.