Sunday Meditation: The Joy of Love

On the sixth Sunday of Easter the Gospel continues with Jesus’s great discourse, and here He gets to the heart of Christianity.  Keep in mind that the second reading is from the First Letter of St. John, where the evangelist makes the astounding declaration that God is Love. 

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.

Remain in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,

just as I have kept my Father's commandments

and remain in his love.

 

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you

and your joy might be complete.

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

No one has greater love than this,

to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

I no longer call you slaves,

because a slave does not know what his master is doing.

I have called you friends,

because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you

and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,

so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

This I command you: love one another."

~Jn 15:9-17

If God is love, then what kind of love is God?  In Greek philosophy there were five kinds of love: Eros, or romantic love; Philia, or love between friends; Storge love between family members; Philautia, or self-love; and Xenia or hospitality.  Jesus uses none of these terms.

What Jesus uses is Agape, and here is a definition from Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape

Agape (/ɑːˈɡɑːpeɪ, ˈɑːɡəˌpeɪ, ˈæɡə-/;[1] from Ancient Greek ἀγάπη (agápē)) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for [human beings] and of [human beings] for God".[2] This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a profound sacrificial love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance.

What it comes down to is charity to the point of sacrifice.  That is what Jesus calls us to do.  I’m going to offer two homilies.  First from Fr. Joshua Kibler, C.O. at the Pittsburgh Oratory.

 

Here also is an excellent homily from Bishop Barron.

 

 

That is spot on.  I have grown tired of all the people point out errors of dogma or of flawed morals and have no love.  They are nothing more than “noisy gongs” and “clanging cymbals” (1 Cor 13:1). 

Sunday Meditation: "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you

and your joy might be complete.”

 

Today’s John Michael Talbot song appropriate for the reading, I Found My Beloved.

 

If you didn’t catch the closing lyrics, here they are:

So I have abandoned

All I ever sought to be

And in dying

My spirit has been released

Feast of the Epiphany with John Michael Talbert

Today was the Feast of the Epiphany, and I have posted often on it.  But I was listening some John Michael Talbert songs this evening and I wanted to create a post of two songs, one certainly on the epiphany and the other more loosely.  First, his rendition of “We Three Kings.” 

 

He plays it a shade slower than most.  I think it gives the song more reverence. 

Then I came across this song which I had never heard before, “I Found My Beloved,” which is not a Christmas song, nor a song of the Magi.  Actually it’s an imagine excursion from the point of view of St. John of the Cross.  But it struck me that these are the emotions any one of the Magi might have experienced. 

 

That is a magnificent song.

I hadn’t posted much Christmas music this year.  Between work, which took me a way for a couple of weeks, illnesses in the family, and then my cold.  I just haven’t had that much time.  Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Feast of the Epiphany.