John 15: 12-17
Jesus said to his disciples:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has 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 do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
The Knowledge of Being Loved
Blessed John Sullivan, SJ, was not a particularly gifted teacher, from what I’ve been told, and yet, all his students at Clongowes College in Ireland loved him. Regardless of whatever they learned (or didn’t learn) in class, it was clear that he cared about each one of them deeply. For those of us who have worked in education before, it can be so easy to fixate on “learning goals” and SWBAT’s (“Students will be able to...”), but these benchmarks mean absolutely nothing if students don’t first take away with them the sure knowledge and experience of being loved when they leave the classroom.
And so it goes with all our relationships. The Lord says, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Like Blessed John, do we love with Christ’s love? Do we love others for who they are and not what they do? Do they know it?
—Alex DeWitt, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic of the Midwest Province finishing his theology studies at Regis College in Toronto.
Prayer
Blessed John, pray to Christ for us, so that, freed from the idols of our expectations, we might love gently and generously, as he did. Amen.
—Alex DeWitt, SJ