To love one another

Love one another as I have loved you.  During the Year of Faith how well are you, or am I, getting to know Jesus? Do we feel closer, understand him more deeply? In order to love our other dear ones—and the not so dear ones too—we need to know quite a lot about Jesus and how he has loved us. Footwashing, life-giving, cross-carrying, forgiving—even remonstrating—were some of the qualities that Jesus displayed during these days.

The Holy Week reflections in the booklet Family Moments and Faith Moments are on this theme and it, no doubt, is a source for spiritual growth.

Some 30 years ago when my late husband Chris and I first became involved in marriage ministry I remember being really struck with that sentence, that calling one could say: How did Jesus love us?

In the manual for “Evenings for the Engaged”, an old programme which is still being well used in places, the qualities of his love are spelt out and presented for us to reflect on and imitate in our own lives, possibly as an examination of conscience before Confession or a family reconciliation service.

Total and permanent: every moment in good times and in bad, his love was not based on feelings alone.

Forgiving and non-critical: he didn’t sulk when his apostles deserted him or fell asleep when he asked for their prayers.

Warm, tender and gentle: to his friends, children, the sick, the lonely, to almost everyone—except the hypocritical Pharisees whom he roundly and justly condemned.

Open and intimate: sharing deeply with them, treating them as his friends and not servants.

Life-giving: physically raising the dead to life and giving hope to the hopeless.

Dependent: making himself dependent on us human beings, allowing himself to be maltreated and killed.

Faithful: belonging fully to his Father and to his followers, not abandoning them.

Passionate: “With great desire have I desired to eat this Passover meal with you,” he told them before giving them the gift of himself in the Eucharist.

The MARFAM booklet Marriage and the Paschal Mystery would apply it more specifically to marriage, and in many Church documents it is dealt with in that way. However, as we well know, in South Africa a first-time married couple and their own biological children are just not the norm for a family. There are ten or more different types of family structures.

But it isn’t about the structure; it is about the functioning of families that we should be most concerned. A reflection on a “father-brother” or an elderly man or woman caring for young children, or even vice versa, are all contexts in which we are invited or challenged to love one another as Jesus loved us. We can look at how well we are doing and give ourselves a rating.

There are times of joy and pain. It may be easier at times to love one’s spouse than one’s teenage children, but not always. There are also times when in any of those many types of families there is conflict between siblings, between in-laws, or unmarried cohabiting couples.

What is the calling? To integrity, to justice, to the right way and also the “rights way” to go about it, especially during this Human Rights month.

Would getting the structure right be part of the call? Right in the eyes of God, of the Church, of one’s family?

Why are unmarried people having babies, people having abortions, people hurting the ones they love, destroying their own lives and health through substance abuse?

There is a lot to think about this coming week when it comes to footwashing, life-giving, cross-carrying, living through the tough times together.

It could be a very meaningful activity, possibly using the Stations of the Cross for Families, to reflect in this way on the events of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday. Or reading the gospel, getting to know the Jesus of the story—Superstar or Messiah—learning to understand his love and responding to the invitation to love as he did should bring the whole experience more deeply to life and end with a joyous Resurrection moment to be shared with the ”one another” we are called on to love most personally.

And then, with St Paul writing to the Colossians, we can “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and whatever you do in word or in deed do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through him.”(3:17)

Giving thanks for the possibilities opened up for us and our families by the example set by Jesus.

A blessed Easter to all.