“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.”
We hear those words in the Gospel for this weekend. This is where the core of Christianity is found: keeping the word of God as the manifestation of love - the love, which is also our own identity. Obedience to the Gospel and the virtue of love go hand in hand. One only loves genuinely if the Gospel is what guides one’s path, one’s moral decisions and lifestyle. And when I speak of the
Gospel, I do not refer to the kind of Gospel that one just wants to follow out of personal convenience, but rather the totality of our faith, as handed to us by Jesus himself. That’s why “cafeteria” Catholicism does not make sense, where one picks and chooses what to believe and what to follow,
considering faith solely as a private affair with God. Thus, we hear these lines by the modern secular society: “I am spiritual but not religious”; “I believe in God and I love God, but do not try to tell me how I should love him.” Well, the God Incarnate, whom we adore, specifically reminded us in the Gospel today that we can only love genuinely if we keep his word. And His word or teaching has a context, has a tradition, and is not a matter of personal opinion. The Gospel did not just fall from the sky in the form of a book, where we can just read the plan of God according to our own personal
interpretation; He channeled it through the Church, as the guardian of the truth and who herself experienced and was formed by her personal encounter with the living God.
In any kind of endeavor, especially when it comes to important offices and responsibilities, we regard highly the value of credibility and accountability. We see this, for example, for people holding public office – if they lie or have done something that tarnishes their office, one would always hear a clamor for resignation. The point is that credibility and accountability are important values that we hold highly. The same seriousness should be applied to spiritual life. It is our witnessing to faith, our seriousness to live the Gospel values even in the midst of opposition and inconvenience that makes faith truly alive and strong. In as much as the externalities of faith like devotional pieties communicate and articulate the profundity of our beliefs, they only become meaningful if they relationships, and if they form how we live out our unique vocation.
In my practice of faith, what is the most valuable thing for me? Does the Gospel inform my important decisions in life? What is the role of my faith in my moral decisions? Ultimately, the litmus test if we are indeed keeping the word of God, meaning we are indeed loving, is if we are transformed by the faith that we embrace and become agents of transformation as well. Will it be easy? Will it be perfect? Of course not, but we trust in the promise of Christ to the disciples today: “I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” We have received this Spirit in virtue of our baptism and more vividly in the sacrament of confirmation, but the Spirit needs our collaboration – because, as what I have said before, we can only remain in God and abide in him if we do it freely, consciously and joyfully. How good are we in keeping God’s word? ~ Fr. Cary