I have asked this question one other time. I would like to ask it again, whom do you love the most in your life? You may have many different answers. But they are all not true. I will say the person everyone loves most in this world is themselves. You love yourself the most. Why do I say that? You like to do your will, follow your desires, and fulfill your wishes. That’s what we heard in the Gospel today. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” We could say that it is a powerful statement by Jesus. Does this mean that every time we sin, we do not love Jesus? Yes. Although we love Jesus, every time we sin, we love something or someone else more than Jesus. If we love Jesus more than anything else, we will keep ourselves free from sin for Jesus. If we love Jesus, we will strive to give ourselves totally to him.
When we sin, we are giving ourselves to something other than Jesus or somebody other than Jesus. And when we love Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will not want to put anything, no matter how small, before Jesus. Again the words of Jesus in our Gospel are, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) Sometimes we hear people make statements like, “Jesus understands that I am human. He will forgive me.” Jesus is forgiving, and we do not doubt Jesus’ mercy. But if we love Jesus more than anything, we will put Jesus before whatever it is that is tempting us, and we will try to root that sin out of our lives completely.
Loving Jesus, therefore, is not just something emotional; loving Jesus means changing our lives, reforming our lives, working on our personalities and characters, overcoming sinful habits, stretching ourselves to love as Jesus loved. Loving Jesus means thinking about ourselves and others as Jesus thinks. Where does your information about yourself and others and the world come from? If it comes only from TV and materialistic western culture that does not understand the difference between freedom to sin and the freedom to do what is right, our minds may be contaminated by false images of ourselves, others, and the world. But if we genuinely want to love Jesus, we will fill our minds with his thoughts and his way of looking at the world. We can fill our minds with Jesus’ thoughts by reading the Bible, reading spiritual books, and praying as much as possible every day. If we fill our minds with the filth of the world, how can we love Jesus? It would be impossible, and it would be impossible to keep his commandments. Let us fill our minds with the thoughts of Jesus so that we may love him and keep his commandments. Again the words of Jesus “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” means that we can’t serve two masters at the same time.
Truly loving Jesus leads us to give up whatever in our lives draws us away from Jesus. Truly loving Jesus leads us to make changes in the way we live and think and act. Sinning is putting Jesus in second place, but when we love Jesus, we put Jesus in the first place and so we will keep his commandments. The question we have is how much we love Jesus? And the answer is very vivid. Just look into our lives how well we keep his commandments.
But ask Jesus how much does he love us? He would stretch out arms and say this much. For he stretched out his arms on the cross and died for us. Let us never be afraid to turn to Jesus for mercy after sinning; he is always waiting to forgive us and restore us. Let us resolve during this Mass to love Jesus by keeping his commandments so that the love of Jesus and the Father and the Spirit may be in our hearts and we may have Jesus in our heart.