06 May 2007

John 13:34

"I give you a new commandment: love one another."

Jesus commands us to love. He is calling us to be in unity with his father and himself who are both love and from this love to allow the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, and flow through us to the world, so that the world may see the love of the Father and the Son for each other and for ourselves.

How do we love?
Jesus answers, "As I have loved you." John 13:34

One crucial aspect of Jesus' love is his lack of expectations. A priest once told me, "True, selfless love has no expectations." When we expect nothing from another, we are totally free to love them completely without the burdens of expecting something in return. If we have expectations created in our minds and our hearts, these expectations will eventually fail to be fulfilled, leaving us feeling hurt and finding it difficult to love the one who failed to fulfill our expectations. As Christians, Jesus offers us a tremendous freedom--the freedom to love unconditionally, only thinking about the other person.
Our only job is to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, allowing him to break down our expectations of God, of our parents, siblings, friends and teachers and to help us love them fully, free from any burden of worry.

As always we look to our Mother Mary to help us learn to love without expectations. Her whole mind, body and heart were directed toward loving God, and she expected nothing in return.
We ask you Mother to pray for us, so that we may see what expectations we have created for God and others and that we might have the strength to cooperate with your son in order to break down those expectations and to live in the freedom of true love that he offers unconditionally to each of us.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

love one another. how simple to say, and so hard to actually do. sometimes it's so much easier to not like someone, to treat them like dirt. but what we really should do is love them no matter what.
loving someone when you dislike them is really hard to do. i should know. but if we put our trust in God, and believe in him, he helps us to love, no matter what the circumstance may be.
thank god that Jesus has no expectations for us, b/c if he did, we would all be screwed. that's the amazing thing about God, he doen't expect us to be perfect, and yet his love for us is perfect.
F.Y.I....God loves you..isn't that sweet??
just my thought

Anonymous said...

love one anougher...okay