May 14 Sun
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments". Love is not something lyrical and vaporous, but a fulfillment of the good and wise will of God, our Father. The Lord, who unceremoniously censured the numerous Jewish precepts, describing them as a heavy burden (Mt 23:4), reminds us that there is no love for God and for others where there are no works that manifest this love. Jesus does not want a forced love, but a free and spontaneous love, but without capricious sentimentalism.

When philosophies that have turned feeling or instinct into a key of speculation, confusing sincerity with comfortable obedience to the state of mind. When freedom is so often understood as license. When one appeals to one's own conscience to circumvent one's duties towards God, affirming that God cannot admit a forced service, that one does not feel, Christ lets fall this realistic phrase, a friend of deeds and not of words: "He who accepts my commandments and keeps them, he loves me". The spontaneity of a living member of a living body - we are members of the Mystical Body of Christ and He is the Head - is either at the service of the head or it is a cancer.

Let us ask ourselves: Do I make the commandments of the Law of God my own? Am I interested in the objectives of the Church, of the parish, or do other interests take precedence over this principal and pleasing duty? Do I attend Holy Mass to give God the worship that He deserves and wants? Does the extension of the Kingdom of Christ, that many may find the truth that sets man free and assures him eternal life, constitute the true motor of my existence?

There are those who have a sad, contrary image of Christianity. It is thought that everything consists in obeying a burdensome set of dispositions that, lacking the love that gives them meaning, end up tiring and end in rejection. And this is not so. It is a task of love. And not just any love. It is something pleasant and bearable as everything that is done for love, even if it costs.

Sadness makes no dent in the one who remains united to God by love. What can disturb a Christian," asks St. John Chrysostom, "Death? No, because he desires it as a reward. Insults? No, because Christ taught us to suffer them: 'Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you' (Mt 5:11). Sickness? Neither, because the Scripture advises: 'Receive what God commands you and be of good cheer in the vicissitudes of trial, for gold is tried in the fire, and men pleasing to God are tried in the crucible of tribulation' (Eccl. 2:5). What then is there left to trouble the Christian? Nothing. On earth, even joy often ends in sorrow; but for those who lead a life according to Christ, even sorrows turn into joy.

To be a Christian is to savor the immense, inexpressible joy that God loves me, seeks me out, is interested in me and forgives my clumsy and sometimes ungrateful ways of behaving, and, consequently, to try to correspond to this love that is as great as it is undeserved.