As I have loved you

In the 2022 documentary film With This Light, we are introduced to the inspiring life of the Franciscan nun Maria Rosa Leggol (1926-2020).

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She dedicated her life to saving over 80,000 abandoned and deprived children in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, giving them hope and new life by providing shelter, care, and education. What force of spirit has enabled Sr. Rosa to do this?

Sr. Rosa was one of the examples of the modern-day disciples of Jesus caught up in the dynamism of love. In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues his farewell discourse and assures his followers that his physical absence is not the end. In giving them the new commandment—“Love one another. As I have loved you” (v 34)—he is foreseeing the continuation of the “movement” that he has started. The motor of the movement is love, and it is new because it is not just a command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The new measure of love is Jesus’ standard: “to love as I have loved you.” The total, self-effacing love that Jesus enacted in his earthly life through his public ministry, his passion, death, and resurrection was to be the mark of everyone who wants to follow him. Jesus’ love empowers the disciples to be new persons, with new strength, new purpose of life, and new identity: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (v 35).

While it sounds as if this love is only for the intimate circle of the disciples, we know in real life that love expands to embrace all. And that is the witness of Christian love that we have seen in the past and which continues to the present. The commitment of Jesus’ disciples has always been to empower persons, especially the marginalized—the least, the last, and the lost.