8 January – Reading
Commentary on 1 John 4:7-10
We move today into the third part of 1 John called ‘The Source of Love and Faith’. It is divided into two parts: the first deals at length with ‘love’ (4:7—5:4); the second is about ‘faith’ (5:5-13). Today John emphasises that the initiative for love comes from God and not from us. God does not love us because we love or obey him.
The word ‘love’ (Greek, agape) in its various forms occurs 43 times altogether in this letter. It is used no less than 32 times in the passages that begin today through verse 3 of chapter 5!
‘Love’ is one of the most used (and abused) words in our language. Our music lyrics use it all the time and there have likely been songs about love since the dawn of music. We use it in all kinds of other contexts too. People ‘love’ chocolate or they ‘love’ spending hours watching football on TV. People are ‘in love’ and they ‘make love’. And so on.
What, then, do we mean by love in our reading today? CS Lewis, the Christian writer, wrote a book called The Four Loves. There he describes four kinds, all of which should be part of Christian living. One of these is agape, the form of love that 1 John is talking about. A definition of agape that captures its essence is: “a passionate desire for the well-being of the other”.
This is the love that God unconditionally extends to all his creatures without exception. It is the love that each of us, too, is to extend to every one of our brothers and sisters—again, without a single exception. It is an outreaching love, an unconditional love. It does not depend on mood, liking or disliking. It is based purely and simply on the need and on the good of the other. It may or may not be expressed sexually, but it is definitely not the love (eros) that most of the pop songs are talking about.
No matter what we do, no matter how evil or vicious we are, God’s love for us remains unchanging and unchangeable. The old hymn (Love it was that Made Us) says it this way:
Love it was that made us and Love it was that saved us…
The reason is simple—God is love.
Love enters into his very being. God cannot not love—if he did, he would not be God.
It is strange to say (and for some it may be shocking), but God loves the most depraved person we could imagine and Our Lady or one of the saints in exactly the same way. He cannot do otherwise. Is there no difference then?
The difference between Our Lady and the evil person is not in God’s love for them, but in their response to the love offered to them. One person has a closed heart, while Our Lady, from the moment of the Annunciation, gave an unconditional ‘Yes’ which she never withdrew.
All our loving, then, is simply an opening of our heart, a return of the love that God has first shown us. When we reveal ourselves as loving persons, it is because God’s love is working in us and through us. The sign that we are loving him is also that we are filled with love ourselves, love which originally came from him.
As someone once said, God’s love is like electricity. God’s love is only in us when it is passing through us. It can never stop with ourselves. If we keep that love to ourselves, it dies.
The question then is not: Does God love the drug pusher? (He does.) The question is: Does the drug pusher love his brother? (If he does, he is certainly going about it in a strange way.) Anyone who is a deeply loving person to those around him is already full of God’s love. God’s love never changes, but it can be blocked by a closed heart.
God’s love is available in abundance to anyone who opens his or her heart to him. May I be able to do that. But that love, too, must continue to flow out beyond me to everyone I meet. It is impossible to separate God’s love for me and my love for others. We cannot have one without the other.
Our Christian life, then, is about being loving persons, not primarily about orthodoxy or theological expertise, or conformity to rules, or making sacrifices, or carrying out “religious” duties. As St Paul says in his famous passage in the first letter to the Corinthians:
…if I…do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Cor 13:2)
Today’s reading says:
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
If I am not a loving person, all the rest is a waste. If I am a truly loving person, everything else is taken care of. And what is the source of that love? It is not ourselves says John, but rather:
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us…
The evidence is that God:
…sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Jesus hanging on the cross is the most dramatic sign of God’s love for us, a love that is totally gratuitous (so we call it ‘grace’) and never earned by any action of ours. Let me today look at Jesus on the Cross, say a big ‘Thank you’ to him and then go and pass on his love for me to everyone I meet.
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8 January – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 6:34-44
Just before today’s passage begins we are told that the Twelve had just returned from the mission on which Jesus had sent them. He suggested that they all go to a secluded spot where they could rest. So they set off there in one of their boats. (In spite of what we are told in Mark 1:18 and 20 about their leaving their boats to follow Jesus, we still see them in use.) However, the crowds spotted them and large numbers ran along the shore. As such, by the time Jesus and his companions had reached their destination, they were faced with a huge crowd. Perhaps the disciples were very disappointed to see their day of rest so badly disrupted. Jesus, on the other hand, was filled with compassion as he looked over the crowd. He saw them as people lost and confused; they were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus, of course, is their Shepherd. He began by teaching them many things, helping to bring clarity and understanding into their scattered lives.
As evening began to draw in, the disciples approached Jesus and urged him to let the people go to the surrounding villages and towns where they could get something to eat. Did they say this because they really felt for the people’s needs or because they wanted to be left alone? Jesus replied by telling his disciples:
You give them something to eat.
His disciples remonstrated:
Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?
It would require a large amount of money to give everyone even a little to eat.
Then Jesus told them:
How many loaves have you? Go and see.
They found that there were just five loaves and two fish—for Jesus that was enough. The people were told to sit down in rows on the green grass. The scene recalls Psalm 23:
The Lord is my shepherd
[Jesus saw the crowd as sheep without a shepherd];
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures…
[the people sat in rows on the green grass];
You prepare a table before me…
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life…
The scene is also reminiscent of the Israelites encamped in groups in the desert (Exod 19:1-2) and the prophets speaking about the transformation of the desert into pastures where the true shepherd feeds his flock (see Is 35).
After the crowd was seated, Jesus:
Taking the five loaves and the two fish…looked up to heaven [to his Father] and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.
The whole passage has strong Eucharistic overtones. There is what we would now call the Liturgy of the Word, when Jesus taught the people at length, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when the bread was blessed, broken and distributed to the people in groups or communities. The amount left over points to the huge generosity of God in taking care of his children.
It is worth noting that Jesus does not distribute the bread and fish himself, but delegates his disciples to do this. And that is how Jesus comes into people’s lives today—through the agency of his dedicated followers.
It is also significant that the feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle of Jesus which appears in all four Gospels. It can be understood on many levels. It looks backward to the feeding of Israel with manna in the desert during the Exodus (Ex 16). It was expected in some circles that this would be repeated in the messianic age—as in fact happens here. It may also point to the prophet Elisha’s feeding 100 men with just 20 loaves of bread, an action met with the same scepticism as the disciples showed, but in this case too, there was some left over (2 Kgs 4:42-44).
Altogether in the Gospels there are two multiplication stories in Mark and Matthew and one each in Luke and John. This is taken as an indication of the importance of eucharistic gatherings in the early Church.
But the story essentially points beyond the Eucharist to what it signifies. The breaking of the bread and its being shared out among all present is intended as a sign or symbol of the life of the Christian community, where all the resources of the community are shared and divided in such a way that no one is in need. And this way of life is also to be fostered in the wider community.
It is a story about the love of God for his people and how he takes care of them, but that love is shown in practice by his people’s passing on that love, especially to those in need. If that does not happen, then the Eucharist becomes a sign of nothing. It is simply reduced to an abstract ritual.
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