No Greater LOVE . . . . . . .

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. John 15:12-16

 

If ever anyone ever asked me which is my favourite symbol, without a shadow of a doubt, the answer would be a star. I am a dreamer and I love fairy tales. And if you associate the two you would be able to understand why it’s a star. I am a believer, if love is an infinite universe, then I would say my heart feels one with the whole universe itself.

‘The Cross’ is more than a symbol. There can be no expression of love, such as the one told every day of the One Good Friday.  Thus the cross is an ultimate expression of undying love.

Jesus Christ willingly gave up His life on Mount Calvary.  He was blameless, righteous and yet convicted, tortured, and killed.  Philippians 2:8- …He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross out of love for His heavenly Father and His Father’s love for His children.

This is from a homily, delivered during a mass, recounted by my brother to me.  

Two of the soldiers, were walking through the desert, in the scorching heat of the sun. One soldier carrying the other, for one is wounded. It’s been nearly two days and their food supply is almost exhausted. For miles there is nothing but the dessert. The wounded soldier refuses to eat any more of the ration, and makes an earnest request from his companion. He asks him to let him die. And once he does, to have him for food, so that he will make it through to home. The other one is reluctant. This is a person he calls friend. But the wounded soldier wants to see his friend make it home. He dies. And the promise is kept. A friend makes it home.

Father concludes, the homily with: No greater love a man can have than that he die to save his friend.

I am sure most of us would agree that, should it ever come to it, we would be willing to die for our friend. If we look at Christ, the man speaking, and remember that He has no enemies, that is to say that He loves and looks upon everyone as a friend, then we see that when He said, “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,” He meant, or might have said, for another, or even, for one’s enemy. I wonder how many of us would be willing to die that our enemy might live? But that is just what Christ said is the ultimate act of love.

He proved the greatness of His love by dying for His friends, and even for His enemies. His resurrection was the confirmation that He certainly reigns over sin and death.

Observe that I call you friends. Jesus tells His disciples that He has used that word on purpose to encourage them. I do so intentionally. I no longer call you servants, because the servant from his position knows not all his master's mind and is not in his confidence. But to you I have revealed all the truths that My Father sent Me to teach the world, and have kept nothing back. I may therefore justly call you friends.

REMEMBER:

So rejoice in ‘The Cross’.  Rejoice on what Jesus Christ did at Calvary, not just at Easter, but everyday of your life.  Because of it, we have life.  Without it, we’d be damned forever.  The cross of Christ is proof that there is absolutely NO GREATER LOVE.

The most important thing about love is the sincere gift of self. In this sense the person is realized through love. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope.