“No one loves you like He does”: Commentary Fr. Jorge Miró

Father Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on today’s Gospel, Sunday, May 5, 2024, titled “No one loves you like He does.”

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The Word that the Lord gives us today invites us to discover and enjoy the first and main of all the truths of our faith: God is love. This is the common thread of the entire Christian faith.

God loves you. And he loves you freely, without you having to earn this love. He has created you out of love, and he has created you to live a story of love and salvation with you.

In being a person and in being a Christian, everything is grace, everything is a gift, and everything is a call from the Lord. A call to which you have to respond. And in that response, you can open your heart to the Lord or leave it closed. That is the mystery and drama of freedom! “Only from the gift of God, freely accepted and humbly received, can we cooperate with our efforts to allow ourselves to be transformed more and more” (Francis, GE 55).

For this reason, Jesus emphasizes in the Gospel that it is not you who have chosen me, it is I who have chosen you. And he has chosen us to be holy and blameless before him through love (Eph 1:4).

And being Christians, being disciples is not a theory that is learned; or a moralism, which is fulfilled. No. It is living a love story with the Lord, who has given his life for you, who has been sent into the world as a victim of propitiation for our sins, so that we may live through him.

For this reason, he also tells us in the Gospel: I call you friends, because everything that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

And he has chosen us to live a life of friendship, of intimacy, of communion with the Lord and also for a mission: I have destined you to go and bear fruit, and your fruit will last.

And what is that fruit that the Lord wants us to bear?

Remain in his love by keeping his commandments and living the new commandment of love: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than the one who gives his life for his friends.

Without falling – as Pope Francis reminds us – into the two subtle enemies of holiness and discipleship: Gnosticism and Pelagianism (cf. Francis, GE, chapter II).

Gnosticism supposes a faith locked in subjectivism, which ends up “manufacturing” an empty spirituality, a God without Christ, a Christ without a Church, a Church without a people.

Pelagianism forgets the Holy Spirit and grace and tries to attribute everything to human will and personal effort, forgetting that everything depends not on willing or running, but on the mercy of God (Rom 9:16) and that he loved us first (1 Jn 4:19). “We are not justified by our works or our efforts, but by the grace of the Lord who takes the initiative” (Francis, GE 52).

Cheer up! May Jesus continue calling you today to live a love story with you. Let yourself be loved! Open your heart! No one loves you like He does. He doesn’t come to take away anything that makes you happy, but to give you everything.

Come, Holy Spirit!