“What is Love?” – 6th Sunday Easter (B) – 5.5.24

St. Mark the Evangelist Parish (Cranberry/Mars/Butler, PA)

Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/050524.cfm

One of the million dollar questions that we seek to answer in this life is “what is love?” I think if you were to ask people this question you would get all kinds of different answers. One of the popular answers that we might get in the culture is “love is love” or “love is a feeling” or “love is a strong affection for another” or “love is whatever you make it to be.”

The reason why people have such a difficult time defining love is because they are not asking the question correctly. The question should not be “what” is love but instead “who” is love.

Love is a person.

In the second reading it tells us “who” love is. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.”

Most people have no idea what love is because they don’t know who God is.

In the Catechism #221 it tells us who God is. It says, “God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.”

God’s very being is love. As we come to know more fully who God is, then we will know what love is, and what it means to love. We will also learn our destiny. We are made by love and for love, and are made to share in God’s eternal exchange of love forever.

The only way we are able to love is because God first loved us. We did not create love. It is not ours to define or determine its purpose. Love has been given to us as a gift. Our life and existence is a gift, and this love that has been given to us by the mere fact of our existence, permeates every molecule of ourselves and the universe. We don’t invent love. We discover it. Love reveals itself to us. Love shows us not “what,” but rather “who” it is.

How does Love reveal itself to us? We read again in the 2nd reading, “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”

The clearest definition of love is the Cross of Jesus Christ. Christ laying down His life to save us from our sins.

In the Gospel we read, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

There is no greater love than the love that Christ showed us on the Cross. If we are to discover what love is, then we must look to the Cross.

If your love doesn’t look like the Cross- self-giving, self-sacrificial- then it is not love. If you are not willing to die for the other person, whether it is your own life or die to yourself in some other way, then it is not love.

Love is not merely a feeling, as many people would define it. Feelings are a part of love, but we know that feelings aren’t always there when love is present.

We learn that love is an act of the will. Love is a choice. Love chooses to love the other. Love chooses to always give itself away. Love chooses to lay down one’s life for the sake of the other.

Love always says, “I give myself to you. I lay down my life for you.” Not “what can I take from you. What can you give me?”

Love demands sacrifice. Or to put it more bluntly, love demands death.

The reality of this death is not meant to be depressing news. But it is one that leads to abundant life and love.

In the spiritual physics of God, death and sacrifice always lead to greater life and greater love. Without sacrifice and death, it is impossible to experience love in this life. Just as a seed must die to give forth life, so we must die in order to experience life and love.

As we know, love will manifest itself differently in the various relationships in our lives, as the love one has for their spouse will be different than the love they have for their co-worker or sibling, but the call to love, the call to lay down our lives for others is the same.

When we love in this way we don’t just love like Jesus, but we become Jesus. In other words, we become love. Our very being will permeate love and this love will touch the hearts and souls of all those that we encounter.

So again, the question is not, “what” is love but “who” is love. Love is a person. God is love. God is an eternal exchange of love - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- and we are destined to share in that exchange. This love, that is God, has revealed itself by laying down His life for us on the Cross to save us from our sins. If we want to experience true love in this world, we must follow Jesus’ model, the model of the Cross, by learning to lay down our lives for one another. Only then will we discover what love really is.