May 18, 2017
Thursday, 5th Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 15:7–21
Gospel: Jn 15:9–11
Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. You will remain in my love if you keep my commandments, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
“I have told you all this, that my own joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
This question was asked at a convention of husbands: “What is the advantage and disadvantage of having a wife?” One replied: “The advantage is that she’s there when you need someone by your side.
The disadvantage is that she is still there when you want her out of sight.” This answer is thought provoking. The noblest form of love, such as marital love, is not immune to selfishness. Human love, when selfish, can use the beloved as instrument of convenience.
But “selfish love” should be an oxymoron. Love is supposed to be where selfishness is not. The two cannot coexist. Either one loves, or he is selfish. With our experience of selfish love, however, we can safely conclude that human love is not real love. It is so enmeshed in lots of conditions involving the self.
Only in God can we experience genuine love. In today’s Gospel Jesus says his love is the same love the Father has for us. That love is total since the Father did not spare anything, not even his only Son, in substantiating that love. In contrast our love is measured by what money can buy. A husband was confiding to a friend about a big problem. He said that the wife told him she will only believe in his love if he could buy her a precious diamond on her birthday. “What gift did you give her?” the friend asked. The husband replied, “She asked for a diamond and so I gifted her with playing cards and placed the diamond card on top of the deck.”
God’s love is never associated with what he can get from us. The contrary would have been prejudicial to us since we have nothing commensurate to give in return. Can we match God’s love with anything? No. Even if we can, God is self sufficient. He won’t become less of a God if we abandon him. In the preface at Mass the priest prays: “Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness but makes us grow in your grace.”
Notwithstanding the fact that God derives nothing for himself in loving us, he loves us like no other. In this world nobody really loves us the way God does. God’s love is the only love we can rely upon. All other forms of love are bounded. In God alone can we rest assured that we are loved for who we are, not for what we have and for what we can give or do. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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