Jun 8 Mon
Which comes first, God loving me, or I fulfilling the Commandments?
Does God begin to love me when I fulfill the Commandments?
Pope Leo XIV answers:
In the Gospel, we hear some of the words Jesus addressed to his disciples during the Last Supper. As He turns the bread and wine into a living expression of his love, Christ says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
This statement frees us from the misconception that we are loved because we keep the commandments, as if our uprightness were a prerequisite for God’s love. On the contrary, God’s love came first and is the basis for our uprightness.
We truly keep the commandments according to God’s will when we recognize his love for us, just as Christ revealed it to the world. Jesus’ words are therefore an invitation to enter into a relationship, not a blackmail or a suspicious ultimatum.
This is why the Lord commands us to love one another as He has loved us: Jesus’ love begets love within us. Christ himself is the standard, the measure of true love: the love that is faithful forever, pure and unconditional. The love that knows no “buts” or “maybes,” the love that gives of itself without seeking to possess, the love that gives life without taking anything in return.
Since God loved us first, we too can love, and when we truly love God, we can truly love one another. It is like life itself: just as only those who have received life can live, so too, only those who have been loved can love. The Lord’s commandments are therefore a way of life that heals us from false loves. They are a spiritual lifestyle, the path towards salvation.
Precisely because He loves us, the Lord does not leave us alone in life’s trials; He promises us the Paraclete, that is, the Advocate, the “Spirit of truth.”
“The world cannot receive” the Spirit, as long as it persists in evil, oppressing the poor, excluding the weak, and killing the innocent.
On the other hand, those who respond to Jesus’ love will find in the Holy Spirit an ally who will never fail them: “You know him,” says Jesus, “for He dwells with you, and will be in you.” We can therefore bear witness to God, who is love, always and everywhere. Love is not an idea of the human mind, but the reality of divine life, through which all things were created out of nothing and redeemed from death.
By offering us true and eternal love, Jesus shares with us his identity as the beloved Son: “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
This communion of life defeats the Devil — the Paraclete’s adversary. In fact, while the Holy Spirit is the power of truth, the Devil is the “father of lies,” who seeks to set humanity against God and people against one another: the very opposite of what Jesus does by saving us from evil and uniting us as a people of brothers and sisters in the Church.