For nearly a week my brother had been hospitalized with some serious health complications, and so my family spent most of our days with him, enduring the seemingly-endless testing, the fear and boredom, and the 90-something-year-old roommate.
I’m not sure what purgatory is like, but I sometimes get a sense it might be like having a stranger sharing a cramped-and-curtained space with you when you are already feeling like death warmed over.
To be fair, my brother’s roommate was a good man who found himself suffering greatly as a result of a sudden health emergency. He could barely speak and swallow; hospice was called to his bedside.
And perhaps most powerfully, his 88-year-old wife never left him.
Now, I will say this: she was a lot – demanding of the nurses; constantly inviting family in; asking my brother to turn-off his overhead light so her husband could rest. She was loud. Talked constantly. (You get the point). And yet, even my brother – who obviously was held captive to her presence much more so than my parents and I were – offered this insight upon his release: “Say what you will, she really did love him.” He wasn’t wrong.
I witnessed that devotion during the week: she fed him, held his hand when he slept, and comforted him when he was agitated. She anointed him with Padre Pio oil and prayed over him. And in the rare moments when she didn’t invite others in to be a supportive presence for her husband, she simply sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair next to his bed and watched over him.
Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel: “Love one another. As I have loved you, you should love one another.”
It’s so easy to say … and oh-so-hard to live, isn’t it? And yet, it is the only way to really live.
The Book of Revelation alludes to this kind of living, life-giving love in our second reading: John says that he saw the new Jerusalem – the Church – “coming down out of heaven from God like a bride adorned for her husband.” There is something powerful about the bride-groom imagery that captures how true love is supposed to be lived.
At the end of the day, it isn’t all white lace and first dances and honeymoons, as good as these things are. It is, rather, cross-carrying and messy and often exhausting. It is, when all is said and done, Eucharistic.
It’s easy to miss in today’s Gospel, but Jesus says these very words about love as soon as two things happened in his life: he had just given himself – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – to his disciples at the Last Supper; and one of his closest disciples – whom He loved with all His Heart – betrayed him and walked away from the Table for good. It was precisely at this moment, then, that Jesus said that God is glorified.
Why? Because Calvary had begun. True love begins when Calvary begins. Love is sharpened and strengthened only when we are willing to go to the Cross, especially when we do so with and for others.
And when we travel to Calvary, our love is shaped in four specific ways. There are other ways, of course, and you may want to add to this list as you pray this week:
Firstly, the love Jesus speaks of – the love Jesus himself lived -- must be authentic. There was nothing phony or half-hearted about how Jesus gave of Himself. He was joyful and Spirit-filled. He spoke with Truth and boldness from a place of divine justice. He wasn’t afraid to re-direct sinners and steer the lost sheep back Home. He called evil out for what it was, but never to shame – only to bring wholeness and healing to the ones who had gone astray.
Secondly, His Love was reverent. Everything that Jesus said or did came from a place of deep prayer and union with the Father. Before he called his disciples, he prayed. Before preaching and offering the Beatitudes, he went to the mountain to be one with His Father. After the Last Supper and before the Cross, he prayed, so much so that he sweated blood. Prayer is as natural as breathing and as challenging and painful as the Garden of Gethsemane. The Lord has shown us quite clearly: love doesn’t grow without prayer at its center.
Thirdly, Christ’s Love is all-merciful. What makes Christian love different – what makes it agape (highest-level) – is that this love has room for everyone at the Table. It is a love that sees Mary Magdalen as more than a woman with 7-demons; sees Peter’s potential after the Calvary denial; it is a love that helps those paralyzed by fear walk on water and pick-up their mat and move forward in freedom; a love that allows the blind to see forgiveness in action; it’s a love that cries out from a Cross of near-abandonment: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Love forgives. As hard as it is, Christ’s love wants redemption and healing for all of us who have been Judas: to God, to others and even to ourselves.
Finally, the love Jesus challenges us to live is self-sacrificing. It is never ego-driven. Rather, Christ-love dies to self. It pours out for others. It stays on and at the Cross. It feeds others, literally and symbolically. It says the words: “This is Me, given for you.”
Christ-love is Eucharistic. And that is who we are called to be in our relationships with one another, in the vocations we embrace and as the Church, the Bride of Christ.
The recent election of Pope Leo has been a powerful call from the Spirit to challenge us once again as Church to be the Spouse that lives a life of authenticity, reverence, mercy and sacrifice. We all hunger for those gifts; our hearts are restless, as St. Augustine would say, until we fill that space in our lives with the Love Christ longs to pour out so that we can, in turn, share it with others.
As Church – and as disciples on mission – let us recommit ourselves to being a Eucharistic-centered community willing to embrace the Crosses that come our way: whether it be a family member, a fellow-parishioner or a stranger who happens to sit next to us in these very pews. Like Christ, may we live as He did – with open heart and open ARMS: Authentic; Reverent; Merciful and Sacrificial: the very last act of embrace from the Cross. An open reaching-out. One that invites all to find everything we are to receive and to give in return.
As my brother and my family were leaving his hospital room the other day, we said our goodbyes to his roommate and wife. As we did so, we found her sitting beside her husband, one arm wrapped around his neck, lifting him up and supporting him; the other arm was feeding him some goopy cream-of-wheat mixture. Said his wife: “I’d do this for another 90 years. It has been a blessed 68 years of marriage.”
And Jesus said: “Love one another as I have loved you.”