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The Catholic Telegraph
May 5, 2000The Introduction to the Lectionary tells us that the first letter of John was chosen to provide the second readings for the Sundays of Easter time because it fits in "with the spirit of joyous faith and sure hope proper to this season." These readings, therefore, were generally not chosen to illuminate or highlight either the gospel or the first reading, but to reflect the general atmosphere of the Easter season.
This Sunday’s reading is from the beginning of chapter two and has to do with sin and forgiveness. In his usual rambling and spiraling fashion, the author has already been dealing with these matters and will continue to deal with them throughout the rest of the work. Behind it all is his concern for the dissidents in the church community who seem to have been convinced that the essence of faith was to have special knowledge about Christ which rendered unnecessary any concern about personal moral behavior.
At the end of chapter one, the author has been insisting that we are all sinners in one way or another, but that Christ offers us forgiveness. Now, at the beginning of our Sunday reading, he nuances (and repeats!) what he has just said. His point in speaking about the universality of sin and the availability of forgiveness is not to encourage or play down sin. His point is rather to remind us that the ministry of Jesus has won forgiveness for sin and that the risen Christ makes intercession with the Father for us sinners. Of course it is important for us to "know" Him, but knowing Him involves not just abstract information, but also the observance of His commandments. It is simply inconsistent, and therefore false, to say that we are in touch with Christ unless we do what He tells us. Yet if we do observe His commandments, "the love of God is truly perfected" in us. (It is not clear whether this last phrase is speaking about God’s love for us or our love for God. Perhaps it involves both: keeping the commandments deepens and brings to fulfillment the loving relationship that Christ has established between God and us.)
Our faith in Christ, the relationship with the risen Jesus that we entered through baptism, has certain specific consequences. It involves believing the full truth about Jesus, human and divine, but it also calls for behavior that is consistent with our faith relationship, consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus.
Some of the people of John’s time seem to have played down the demands of Christian moral behavior on the grounds that, once one has reached a certain level of knowledge, nothing human makes any difference - whether it be the humanity of Christ or the details of our day to day human conduct. In our time, people are more likely to sidestep the demands of Christian morality on the grounds that God isn’t really interested in all the details of our daily life. All that matters is feeling good about Jesus and feeling good about ourselves. Everything else is irrelevant because "God understands."
Of course God understands, but what God understands is that our relationship with Jesus makes demands on us just as Jesus’ saving mission to us made demands on Him. Catholic Christian morality ("being good") is not a matter of earning God’s love by our behavior, but of responding to the love of God we have already received. It is not a matter of keeping a whole complex system of rules, but of living consistently with the life of the risen Christ that is in us through baptism.
Over the centuries, Catholic Christian thinkers have spent lots of time and energy reflecting on the implications of our life in Christ. Just about every detail of every possible human behavior has been scrutinized to determine what is virtuous and what is sinful. Sometimes, when we lose sight of the basics, it seems that Christian life is surrounded with regulations and prohibitions and that we are supposed to apply most of our attention and energy to avoiding sin. In fact, the commandments of Jesus that John speaks about are relatively simple. We find them expressed elsewhere in First John (2.6; 3.23) and in John’s gospel (13.34; 15.12): believe in Jesus Christ, love one another as He loves us, live as He lived. That’s all Jesus asks of us. Of course, the implications of those commands reach into every aspect of our life, and are supposed to color and direct everything we are and do. No detail of our life is too small to serve as an expression of our faith in Christ or a conduit of our love for one another in Him. No detail of our life is too insignificant to reflect the life of the Lord Jesus.
Faith - knowing Christ - makes demands and offers possibilities. It demands loving as He loves and living as He lived. But it also makes that kind of loving and living possible through His risen life that we share.
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Conversation Questions
Is the commandment of Jesus good news or bad news to me?
To what extent do I love others as Christ loves me?
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