“WHOEVER has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” So admonished Jesus Christ in the May 10 Mass Gospel reading from Saint John (Jn 14:15–21) for the Sixth Sunday of Easter.
To be sure that everyone gets the point, our Lord makes it three times in nine verses: in Jn 14:15, beginning the Gospel reading, and Jn 14:23, quoted in the Gospel Acclamation before the passage: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love him and we will come to him.”
Now, most Christians have heard about the Ten Commandments, received from God on Mount Sinai by the Israelite prophet Moses in the Book of Exodus, the second tome of the Bible (Ex 20:1–17). Jesus affirms those divine edicts and sums them up in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (Mt 22:37–40):
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
But what are Christ’s own commands? And do we heed them today? Let’s see.
The commands of Christ
First and most important, especially for our salvation, is: “Repent, and believe in the good news,” declared by our Lord in the first chapter of the earliest Gospel of Saint Mark (Mk 1:15).
To be saved, we must turn away from our sinful ways and wishes and believe in the message of salvation from our Lord, spelled out in Saint John’s Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
The need to repent and believe is plain: anyone seeking eternity with God — which is what salvation means — must turn away from actions and desires going against Him. And one must believe His saving plan — which is what the Gospel is — or else one would not even care to seek salvation.
Next command, decreed in Saint Matthew’s Gospel before most other instructions of Jesus: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24).
Our Lord’s decree makes clear what he is all about and why he came into our world: his saving mission of suffering for our redemption. He also disabuses would-be followers of any notion that he is a conquering Messiah expected by the Jews to revive Israel’s fabled kingdom. Nope: Christ’s followers shall suffer, not rule.
In several Gospel passages, Jesus spells out how we should fulfill the paramount imperative to love one another. Even before he cited the commandments to love God and others, our Lord instructed in Saint Matthew’s Gospel his hardest tenet, showing love not only for fellow men, but also for God and His perfection:
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven... Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:44–45, 48).
And if we are wronged, Jesus instructs mercy: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt 6:14–15).
Further, Christ repeatedly preached and demonstrated love and caring for the needy, saying in Saint Matthew’s Gospel that we will be judged based on how we fulfilled that commandment:
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Mt 25:31–40).
What about love for God? Jesus makes it absolutely clear what that commandment entails in the Garden of Gethsemane before his Passion and Death: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup [of suffering] pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Mt 26:39).
As the greatest medieval theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas summed up, conforming our will to His is what God commands and which His Son did, reversing Adam and Eve’s original sin bequeathed to us all.
The Last Supper and Ascension edicts
Three more commands, two from Jesus’ Last Supper with his Apostles and one just before he ascended to his Father in heaven.
In Saint John’s Gospel, our Lord said: “I give you a new commandment... Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13:34). And what exactly is the way Christ loves? “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13).
Plainly, Jesus instructs that we must love one another more than we love ourselves, even sacrificing our life for them.
The other Last Supper edict is short, but endless in fulfilling it. After instituting the Holy Eucharist, in which God the Son reprises his entry into our world by turning bread and wine into himself — “Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity,” as the Angel of Peace told three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, the year before Mary appeared to them in 1917 — Christ ordered: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Gospel of Saint Luke 22:19).
That means not just forming and ordaining ministers to offer Mass, but also building congregations who not only attend the Holy Sacrifice, but also believe in the Real Presence of God in the form of consecrated bread and wine.
No wonder, Jesus issued just before returning to heaven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19.20).
So, is humanity heeding Christ’s commands? Let’s talk about that on May 17.
