A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus said to his disciples, because this is a continuation morning after morning from the Gospel according to Saint John, and once again I would urge you to one day pick it up and read this short document in its entirety. It doesn't take long to do it. But, of course, the way we spread it out reading several lines of mourning, it seems to be almost interminable. So our blessed Lord said to his disciples, this is my commandment.
Love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is doing. Instead, I call you friends since I have made known to you all that I have heard from my father.
It was not you who chose me. It was I who chose you to go forth and to bear fruit. Your fruit must endure so that everything you ask the father in my name, he will give it to you. The command I give you is this, that you love one another, And this is the gospel of our lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. The older I get, the less regard I have for this word love. You know, words are signs. They are symbols. And they have meaning only insofar as we agree upon it.
They're arbitrary signs. There's nothing in the law of God or nature that that except maybe with the word papa or ma. And even that, I guess, is open to some controversy. Everything, I guess, is. But words are signs.
They're arbitrary. Therefore, their meanings are simply agreed upon, and they are the media of communication. If you went if you're in a strange town and you come to an intersection of of two roads and you have a sign with the same name on it pointing in four different directions, what good is that sign? And the answer is it's good for nothing. Has no meaning.
Now some years ago, I looked up the word love in the unabridged Oxford dictionary. And if my memory serves, I found 13 columns of meanings. Now that the other bridge that I looked, the page was divided. The page was about this high. It was divided in half, and there were 13 columns of meanings for the English word love.
Now, of course, those columns included all the uses of the word love in English, and they give them so that you you understand it's it's quite an extended document. 13 columns of meanings for the English word love. So here you have a sign that points not only in four directions, but in 13 columns of meanings and 13 columns of directions. So what does it boil down to? I'll tell you what it boils down to.
Our blessed lord told us what it boils down to. He says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. The other I don't you know this word love is so much in the air that you would think that that we knew what we were talking about, that it solves all problems, that it eliminates all or anything that we don't like is going to be resolved by love. Love. Love.
How ridiculous can you get because the people who use it ask them what they mean. The very next time someone uses the word, ask them what they mean by it. Saint Paul tells us what we mean by love, you know, in that that world famous passage. And I have proved people heard people sitting in those pews when they heard that read. They say, I hate that.
And I I was astonished to hear it. Good god. They say they hated to hear that famous document on what love is by Saint Paul. And they said, because it's so impossible. So what do we mean?
The other night there is some kind of a thing on TV, but it showed a little girl who was absolutely disobedient to her mother. And she had little regard for money. They had a very hot dispute, and the kid was, you know, all disturbed. And so finally, goes the mother takes her to school, and then and the little child sees her. Mother is pretty depressed and sad and all that.
So she runs across the street and hollers into the car, mother, I love you. The mother drove away. You see, what do we mean when we say love? What do we mean in honest to God reality? Saint Paul tells us what we what we should be doing, and our Lord said, you say you love me?
Keep my commandments. He didn't say go around telling everybody I love God, I love Jesus. Keep my commandments. Action. Now I'm not saying that virtue consists in action.
I'm only saying I'm first of all, I'm quoting Jesus Christ. He said, if you love me, keep my commandments. And he also said, if you you can tell if you love me by keeping my command in other words, that keeping of his commandments is a proof of your love of him. I repeat, I'm not saying that that virtue consists simply exclusively in action. That's another common view today, and that all truth consists in facts.
Of course, that's a contradiction in turn. So let us ask yourself, honest to God, you say you love your family. Let's begin there. Let's begin with the people we associate with. See, everybody loves the Eskimo or the natives of Timbuktu.
There's no problem. William James brings this out. Do we love the people that we are rubbing shoulders again? I mean rubbing. And when you rub, it can be abrasive.
And some of the people with whom our lives are so closely and intimately entwined, the relationship is abrasive. So what? Now what do we mean when we say we love? Do we mean taking Saint Paul seriously? Saying it means being faithful, means forgiving, it means taking care of people, going out of our way to help them, forgiving them, putting the best interpretation of what they say, being faithful to our duty, thinking of the person's welfare rather than being pleasing to them?
Do we do we are we kind and generous to people because we're afraid of getting their lack of approval? Today you meet plenty of parents, I mean plenty, who are afraid to tell their children the truth about morality. There was an article in yesterday's paper where a mother writes in and asks, Am I doing right and expecting my little girl to live up to Christian morality? Here's a mother asking that question because she's afraid she'll alienate her daughter if she tells her the facts of life that she better shape up to god's law. Do we you see, if we get down to to to the nitty because love is nitty gritty.
Love is the cross. Look where love put Christ. See, love isn't fun and games. The word love is is a it's an empty thing. It's a great big x.
I never saw it brought out so clearly. We were sitting in the evening, one evening in the cockpit of my boat, and two ducks were mating in the water. Somebody says, look, the ducks are loving each other. See, it's when an English word can mean that and all the and and and and can mean the love of Christ for sinners, what in the world are we talking about when we use this sign or symbol love? You've got to give it meaning.
You put significance to it. You do it in your daily living, and not in the abstract, not in the stranger. As I've said many times, people in elevators who see each other just between two floor floors are sometimes more polite to one another in the elevator than they are to the members of their own family at home, and I am not exaggerating. And so let us take our lord's John, you know, his his gospel overflows with this word love, But it's not fun and games if you read it. It is not divorced from Saint Paul's definition of love, and it certainly is not divorced from our blessed Lord.
Because in most instances, Saint John is quoting Christ. And our blessed lord said, if you love me, keep my commandments. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.