Father Emil Kaupan was ordained a priest in 1940 for the Diocese of Wichita, having grown up on a farm right outside the town of Pilsen, Kansas. By all accounts he was a hard-working son of Czech immigrants who wanted from an early age to give his life to Christ and the Church, and so immediately after graduating high school, he entered the seminary, excited for the prospects of being a parish priest at a time when the Church was growing exponentially in the Heartland.
Those first years of priesthood were incredible: celebrating Liturgy; anointing the sick; preparing Wichita couples for marriage; working with students in his parish’s tiny Catholic school.
But then came the Ladies’ Altar Society.
Father Kaupan tried; he really did. But as he shared with a friend shortly after getting ordained: “My God, Bob. Have you ever had to deal with one of these parish committees day-in and day-out?”
And so, perhaps in an effort not to lose his vocation and with the blessing of his bishop, he signed up to be a chaplain in World War II. In his words, Kaupan said, “I want to spend myself for God by bringing these soldiers to Him.”
In one way, that statement speaks to the heart of Jesus’ commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
That is the very heart of Christianity. In fact, it may well be the one teaching that captures the essence of our God and the command He places within us at our Baptism and through the power of His Spirit.
Love as He loves.
But it must be made clear: we are not talking Hallmark love. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. It is sentimental and sweet, and we all need a little Hallmark from time to time.
But that’s not the love Jesus is commanding us to abide in. Our Lord and Savior is calling us to embrace and live a life of love that can only come from Him. It is a love that pours itself out and lays down its life. It is a love that doesn’t count the cost.
This love is agape love – the highest form of love that the Greeks have in their language.
For we Americans, there is one word in our language for love – I can love Wawa and Ford Mustangs and then use the same word to state: I love my family; my parishioners; my God.
For the Greeks, though – and the original language of Scripture – Jesus was urging us to live agape love. As opposed to philos love (the love of deep friendship) and eros love (the love of spouses), agape is the very love of God. It is also the love poured out into our hearts.
Our lives will never be complete without it.
To some degree, most of us experience some forms of agape love in our lives, and we thank God for those cherished moments: holding your newborn, knowing you would sacrifice everything for her; staying at the bedside of a dying parent, telling your mom or dad that you will see them Home as they carry the cross of suffering and fear. That’s agape love.
But the first Letter of St. John (our second reading) and the Gospel of John don’t hold anything back: agape love should be the core of who we are in everything we do: from our encounters with store clerks and fellow employees to the way we respond to those who have hurt us in some way.
Agape love is not for the faint of heart. But make no mistake: by your baptism, Jesus is calling us to live it. And we can, if we but follow this road map he lays out for us:
First, really live the commandments in a spirit of holy obedience. Not just the Mighty Ten, but all the guidelines our Lord asks us to embrace: from the Beatitudes to the Church’s corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Feed the poor. Forgive 70 times 7 times. Welcome the stranger. Carry the cross of the sick, the hated, the imprisoned, and the lost.
When our lives are centered on living these “commands” – they actually become sweet to the taste, and then we grow in incredible friendship with Christ. No longer just servants, we are now his friends. We share in deep intimacy with Him, and that intimacy manifests itself in two very important ways – the very ways John himself experienced as a friend of Christ: by placing our head on His Heart and listening to Him as the beloved disciple did at the Last Supper; then, a day later, by staying at the foot of Christ’s Cross.
Jesus wants you and me to live that very same agape love John himself experienced – and it’s ours for the taking, through grace, of course. It’s always grace and the Spirit.
But there is a second part, too – one that goes hand-in-hand with holy obedience to the commands of God: bear the fruit of your lives joyfully.
Joyfully – not with a grudge; not because it’s expected of us. Joyfully bearing fruit means willingly choosing, even in moments of extreme difficulty, to live in God’s Divine Will, knowing that He always brings resurrection and healing and holiness from the crosses we carry and the Calvary roads we walk with others. Joyful fruit is not fake happiness; it is embracing the truth that sometimes life is really hard, but also knowing that God will never abandon us. Never.
I worry sometimes for myself – and for the world in which we live – that we only scratch the surface of living agape love. We find the demands a burden; we don’t want to be obedient; pruning the branches for joyful fruit hurts. So we just back off. Coast through life. Love without really loving.
Is that what you want? I have to ask myself that question every day. Living lesser loves will certainly make us content, sometimes even extremely happy. But it is only agape love that allows us to lay our heads on the Heart of our Savior and unite our Cross to His for the salvation of souls.
Father Kaupan spent his life and priesthood bearing joyful fruit as he tended to soldiers on the battlefield in the Second World War and Korea. When he was taken captive as prisoner of war in 1950, he was offered the opportunity to leave his men, but chose instead to stay with them in the prison camp.
Conditions there were a living hell, and up to two dozen American soldiers would die every day from malnutrition, disease, lice infestation and extreme cold. And yet Father Kaupan was determined to bear agape fruit: he himself dug latrines, snuck out at night to steal food and medicine for starving soldiers, fed them with his own meager rations, and held every dying young soldier in his arms until they took their final breath. He loved them completely to the end – the very same words that were said of Christ.
Father Kaupan lived agape love, and showed countless young POWs what it means to be a true disciple of Christ.
They say that when Kaupan died, it was due to untreated pneumonia and malnutrition, offering his own suffering for the holiness and faith life of his “boys.” Most of them who survived the ordeal became good Catholics themselves, and lived heroic lives of agape love once they returned to the States after the War.
“He was our hero, and he was Christ for us,” said one soldier-survivor. “He laid down his life for us and showed us what it means to truly love.”
Agape love.
Beautifully, in one small way, these soldiers returned that same love for their padre: as the Korean officials were preparing to dump Kaupan’s body in a mass grave – something they did with all the POWs – his fellow soldiers at great risk to themselves took their chaplain’s body and buried it outside the camp on a separate hill, marking the gravesite with stones. They wanted to come back for him one day to give him a proper burial in his beloved Kansas, which they did. Father Kaupan is now being considered for sainthood.
And Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.”
Live agape.