A Thought

“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”  John 15:12-13

Reading this passage literally, it seems clear that Jesus is referring to the perfect love and the perfect faith which will be expressed when He willfully allows Himself to be delivered to the Cross for death, the death by which sinners can be freed.  Reading more broadly, however, and not quite so literally, we can see “love” expressed not only in a literal shedding of one’s blood unto death but a surrendering of one’s own will for the sake of another whose genuine need exceeds our own.  The tricky part of discerning need, however, is trying not to measure another’s needs according to our own desires; that is, when our needs are more than met and we become confused between the two.

Make no mistake; it is not always about money.  Sometimes the greatest gift we can give to others is our time just as it is often the greatest gift we can offer the Church and to our Lord in prayer, in fasting, in worship, in attending to the Sacraments of the Church, and in singing songs of praise.  Yes, Jesus does teach us that the giving of the tithe must not be neglected, but we must also consider tithes “and offerings” that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

We all have needs, genuine needs according to the body as well as the soul; but if we are unwilling to offer anything except only to those whom we deem worthy of our love, we have entirely missed the point of what Scripture means of divine love, perfect love, sacrificial love.  This comes from the better part of who we truly are; the Image in which we are created.

Blessings,

Michael