The Holy Priest-Martyr Januarius and Those with Him (305-11); the Holy Martyr Theodore of Pergia (138-61)
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Acts 9:20-31; John 15:17-16:2
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Love and hate…two words that define today’s gospel. If you counted, you’d notice the word ‘hate’ appears a lot more than ‘love.’ Maybe that’s the reason the first verse of today’s gospel is stands out: Jesus gives his disciples the command to love one another because they will be surrounded by many who hate them. He never tells them to return hate with hate. Jesus doesn’t explicitly tell his disciples to love those who hate them (at least not in this passage, but see Matthew 5:44), but he does give them his commands so that they will be able to love faithfully despite persecution.
This passage might conjure up images of heroic Christian martyrs in the Middle East or the Soviet Union. But it also applies to our own circumstances, in which friends, family, and colleagues often seem to disdain our faith and to shake their heads at our loyalty to Christian teaching. While we aren’t being thrown into prison or killed, the loss of face when we hold our ground in our commitment to Christ and the gradual alienation from those we love who don’t understand the gospel can feel just as painful. In the midst of that isolation, what comfort does today’s gospel offer us? The comfort of love – knowing that Christ God, in his overflowing love for the world, died for us when we were still sinners, and gives us the power to love all those in our lives: even those who, sometimes, seem to hate us.