“The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah… It will not be like the old covenant, for they broke it… [this time], I will write my law upon their hearts; I will be their God, they shall be my people.” Jer. 31:31-34.
What is this Law, you may ask, that will be written on their hearts? Listen, then, to the words of Christ Himself, “I give you a new commandment; love one another. As I have love you, so you also should love one another.” John 13:34. This is the law of love that is written on our hearts. And Love is the complete giving of one’s whole self, mind, heart, and soul, to the beloved. This type of love is new to men, so it must be taught to them. It is not a love of attraction nor the love of brotherhood or friendship. It is rather sacrificial love for the life of the beloved. It is the disregard of self, to the benefit of the other. This type of love is found among the Christians, they are really brave, they have denied themselves to follow Christ. They too, lay down their lives for their friends. The world witnessed this heroic love, this Christian love, when St. Maximilian Kolbe, following in the footsteps of Christ, offered his life in exchange for Francis Gajowniczek’s life in Auschwitz. Outside this love, life appears as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats describe it, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
“As I have loved you.” Christ put a qualification on this new commandment. This was the writing of the law upon the hearts of men. And the passion of Christ; his suffering, death, and resurrection, was the making of a new covenant with God. It was a new covenant in Christ’s blood.
On the night of the last supper, our Lord said to his disciples, “As I told the Jews, so I say to you; where I am going you cannot come.” John 13:33. And as always, Peter was curious, so he sought an answer. He asked, “Master, where are you going?” And our Lord graciously answered, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, though you will follow later.”
The answer, as to where Jesus is going, is found in the ninth Chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. In that Chapter, St. Paul compares the arrangements for worship between the old covenant and the new covenant. He says, “In the Old Covenant, the High Priest alone went into the holy of holies once a year with the blood of goats and calves to offer sacrifice…But when Christ came as High Priest of the good things that have come to be,…He entered once for all into the Sanctuary not with the blood of goats and calves but with His own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.” Heb.9.
Only the High Priest entered the holy of holies. This is where Jesus goes, where no one can come. He goes to do what only He, can do. He goes to the Cross, the Altar of sacrifice, to offer Himself to the heavenly Father for our sake. This is the making of a new covenant. A new covenant of love in His blood. “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” The reason he gives for this new type of love is this; “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.”
To the Apostle Peter, our Lord said, “You cannot follow me now, though you will follow later.” Peter had to wait for an example to be given to him. Such a taste of patience! He had to be taught how to love by looking at love Himself. As a disciple, he had to follow first. “As I have loved you!” Christ’s sacrifice opens the door for all of us to do the same – to love as Christ loves. He says, “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Christ is that grain of Wheat. As Scripture says, “you have fed them with bread, bread of the finest wheat.” Psalm 81:16. Christ is the Bread of the finest wheat. But that grain of wheat had to be refined in the fires of the Cross. Elsewhere He says, “the seed is the Word, sown in the ground of the human soul.” And the Word was made flesh, born of the virgin Mary, and dwelt among us.
It was for this reason that He came. He could not be spared from His destiny. As Isaiah had foretold, “The Lord laid on him our guilt. He bore our infirmities and carried our diseases; he was wounded for our transgressions; upon him was the punishment that made us clean, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53. This new type of love that Christ brings and calls us to practice, is the bearing of all the limitations and weaknesses of the beloved, with patience and prayer. This bearing becomes a sacrifice for the salvation of a soul. And this type of love is possible because it can be taught. And it is the gift from God.
And perhaps to the delight of the Irish, may I also borrow these words from the great Poet, Butler Yeats, to emphasize Christ’s infinite love for us that is sometimes overlooked.
“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
[That one man is Christ Jesus our Lord]
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as the priest, in the person of Christ, invites us during Mass, to pray that his sacrifice and ours be acceptable to God the Almighty Father, let us generously, and willingly offer our lives, hearts, and minds to God as a pleasing sacrifice of love. Let us love as Christ loves.
Amen.
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