Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C Joh 13, 31-35

They asked a nun why she selflessly served the sick, even though they were repulsive. She replied that she did it all for Christ and saw Jesus in them. Christians admire this answer, but an atheist was offended. He declared that Christian love was a kind of pious deception. We should love our neighbor because he is our neighbor, for his own sake. He added: “If someone truly loves me, he will not do so because I remind him of someone else, much less to curry favor with someone else.” And what would that atheist say if he read in the Ignatian Exercises that we should use all creatures, including our neighbors, only insofar as they serve our salvation, and that we should become completely indifferent to everything and everyone? Expressions of this kind are not uncommon in devotional books: “Love God, and God alone; consider everything else as nothing!” But in theology and spiritual matters, all expressions are one-sided. Those who understand them superficially will easily conclude that they should be avoided. So, how can we correctly understand the expression: love your neighbor for Christ’s sake, because we see Christ in him?

Let us begin with the fact that we love every person for something, for some quality, or even just for some occasion or circumstance. We remain friends. We went to school with someone because we were in the army together. Furthermore, we consider this quite natural. How surprised would a mother be if her grown-up son turned to her with these profound words: “You feed me and clothe me because I am your son. But you don’t really love me. If I were the way I am but not your son, you would kick me out of the house.” I don’t know who in that family would want to continue a conversation of this kind! However, since we have raised the issue, it is better to explore it further because it reveals deeper dimensions of Christian love. The nobility of love is truly measured by what inspires and motivates it. We warn young people not to cling to the outward appearance of their bride, to her pretty looks. After all, it is not dignified to judge a human being, who is a profound and mysterious reality, solely based on their hair, nose shape, or figure. The typical drama of Cyrano de Bergerac impressively depicts the absurdity of this attitude, where a pleasing appearance combined with banality tragically prevails over the true qualities of the soul and sincere love. Intelligence alone cannot be the ultimate measure of intimate human relationships. After all, a gifted person can be a saint, a profiteer, or even a criminal.

We say that we should judge others by their hearts, that is, by what they are, by their innermost “self.” From this consideration, it follows that close human relationships based on something external, a quality foreign to the person, are unnatural. It isn’t very ethical to marry a woman solely for her money. Morality also condemns as impure regular marital intercourse in which one’s mind is on another person and one is physically attracted to them. In the true sense of the word, we cannot, therefore, confuse one person with another in love, either in our imagination or our intentions. However, the objection raised at the beginning returns with full force. How can we truly love a person when we do not want to see anyone other than Christ in them?

The first and most straightforward answer points to the doctrine of the image of God in man. What do I worship when I take off my hat or kneel before the cross at a crossroads? Certainly not wood or stone. My memory and my interest are directed toward the Crucified One. Does the stone or wood of the cross suffer any damage? On the contrary! We would kick away the stone and burn the wood. But because it is the image of Christ, we protect even the material from damage and place it in a place of honor. Similarly, it can be said that a sick person being cared for by a merciful nurse does not suffer any harm because she sees Christ in him. His appearance may even be repulsive. But this is overcome by the firm conviction that it is a service to the Crucified One. Therefore, no injustice is done to the sick person; however, he benefits greatly. This is perhaps somewhat similar to the fact that a family helped a poor student during the war because he reminded them of their own son who was at war. Did they hurt him by doing so? Did he protest that their feelings were just a kind of substitution of persons?

This answer is not wrong. But it is not complete. In the case of the poor student cared for in place of a distant son, it is indeed a case of confusion between two people who look alike but are strangers. But can the same be said of the sick man and Christ? If we looked at Jesus only as a historical figure, only as someone who was born, lived, and died two thousand years ago in Palestine, then seeing him in our neighbor would indeed be just a kind of pious fiction. For us, however, Christ is a living reality, the foundation of all events, the head of the mystical body of the Church. According to St. Paul, we have “grown together” with him (Rom 6:5), just as two trees planted close together eventually form a single trunk. Through baptism, we have been “immersed into Jesus Christ” (v. 3) so that we may “live a new life in Christ” (v. 4).

St. Paul thus presupposes a close unity between man and Christ, a union that penetrates our innermost “I.” Therefore, if someone sees Christ in me, he does not know a stranger whom I remind him of, but he considers the most beautiful and innermost part of my self. He loves me with the most noble love because he values what is most precious in me; he values my heart, which is the temple of God. From this temple, the grace of the Spirit then spreads to the natural qualities, to thinking, willing, feeling, and even to bodily life. That is why a merciful nurse cares for the sick body of her neighbor with the same devotion with which a Christian educator cultivates the spiritual qualities of a child, with which a priest cares for the moral wounds of the heart. All this is done for Christ and in Christ, and therefore also for man, for one’s neighbor.

One of the nurses in Africa wrote in his diary: Some worship Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, kneeling before the host in a golden monstrance. I try to show him the same reverence in the sick. I kneel before him when I bandage the foot of a leper, I worship him when I place compresses on a feverish head. There is an objection that Christians of past ages were too concerned with their perfection, that theology was too preoccupied with the dizzying mysteries of dogma, and that what belongs to the very essence of the Gospel message, namely, love of neighbor, was neglected. Today’s spiritual literature on this subject is much more extensive than it used to be. But it is precisely this abundance that leads to the danger of flattening. J. Daniel called this horizontal Christianity, which loses its vertical dimension. What would remain of the admonition of St. John, the apostle of love, if our relationship with other people lost its Christological foundation and anchoring in God’s love, which is like the center of the circle of human relationships? “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. … if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is perfect in us. And by this we know that we remain in him, that he remains in us, because he has given us of his Spirit (1 Jn 4:7-13).