Love and Loyalty Are Not Strange BedFellows
Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR
Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C
St. Gerard Majella Church
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Friends of the Lord, in today’s Gospel, Jesus makes a connection between love and loyalty or obedience. According to dictionary.reference.com, love is “a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person; it is a feeling of warm personal attachment.” The same dictionary defines loyalty as “the state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.” It is also a faithful adherence to a sovereign, government, leader, cause etc. According to the same online dictionary, obedience means “submission.” So, when Jesus says: “Whoever loves me will keep my word...” he means “loyalty and obedience.” If we truly love the Lord, then he expects us to be faithful to him, to keep his word, to submit to him and to be loyal to him. Love can be professed verbally, but it is better demonstrated in deeds. I once told a friend that in a traditional African society, people hardly say, “I love you.” Even those in marriage hardly say that to their spouses. Then my friend asked me, “Then, how do you know that someone loves you?” I replied, “You know by the way they treat you.”
To Jesus, loyalty is the best test of love. It was through loyalty and obedience that he demonstrated his love for his Father; and it is by our obedience that we must demonstrate our love for him. To Jesus, love is not just a sentiment or emotion. It is rather an expression that is always moral, demonstrated through obedience. Put differently, love is a moral expression revealed in obedience. We know there are people who profess their love in words but who, at the same time, bring pain, misfortune, and heartbreak to the same people they claim to love. There are young people who say they love their parents, yet, they cause them sorrow, anxiety and sleeplessness. There are husbands who say they love their wives and wives who say they love their husbands, and who, at the same time, through their inconsideration, irritability and thoughtless unkindness bring pain and grief to the very one they claim to love. Love is a reality demonstrated only in true obedience, faithfulness and good deeds.
The Lord asks no small thing from his disciples. Keeping the Lord’s word is keeping his commandments. And it is not going to be easy for anybody. Being a Christian and following Jesus’ teachings requires effort on our part. To be a disciple of Jesus means “to follow after him." It means following the way of Jesus who is the Way; it means keeping and living the truth of Jesus who is the Truth; it also means accepting the life of Jesus who is the Life. To love Jesus means to take seriously what he took seriously. Following Jesus entails striving to imitate him.
“Whoever loves me will keep my word...” But does this mean that each time we sin we do not love him? Any time we deliberately commit sin we love something or someone else more than we love Jesus. If we love Jesus more than anything or anybody else, we will strive daily to be loyal to him by giving ourselves totally to him. And when we love Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind and strength we will not want to put anything, no matter how small before him. Loving Jesus is not just an emotional feeling. It is something deeper and greater than that. Being loyal and obedient to Jesus entails changing our lives, our lifestyles, reforming our lives, working on our personalities and characters, stretching ourselves to please him. Loving Jesus is putting him first, second and third before anything or anybody. Loyalty to the Lord will require making daily efforts to overcome any form of sin no matter how small it is. If we love Jesus truly, we will be working everyday to eliminate all sins. Galatians 5:24 say, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.”
St. Paul loved Jesus so much to the point of declaring, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” St. Peter loved Jesus that when Jesus asked him thrice, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He confidently replied, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.”
The command to love and obey the Lord’s word is not an easy task. Anyone who tells you it is easy is probably not observing it. It is difficult! Jesus knows it is going to be a struggle, hence, he promised to send us the Holy Spirit: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you.”
Now, loving Jesus and keeping his word comes with an amazing reward: “...my Father will love them (i.e. those who love Jesus and keep his word) and we will come to them and make our dwelling with them.” What an awesome reward!
