3rd Sunday of Pentecost

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Whenever I ask someone: Do you love Jesus? The answer is obvious: Of course I love Jesus!

There is no greater love than the love with which God has loved us. The apostle John tells us, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16, and Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13

But how do we respond to God's love? Nothing can reward love. Revelation tells us, " If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, he would utterly be contemned." Song of Solomon 8:7
We can only respond to God's love with love. "We love him, because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Our love for Christ is linked to results and bears fruit. Jesus says in this Sunday's reading, "He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and manifest myself to him... we will come to him, and make our home with him." If we love Jesus, we enter the circle of God's and Christ's love, and Jesus manifests himself to us. God the Son and God the Father will make their dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit. These words come as no surprise to us, for the apostle Paul tells us, "Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" 1 Corinthians 3:16

Jesus shows us the way to reach his love, saying, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word." Yes, if we want to love God with true love, we must keep his word. Where do we find this word? We find it exclusively in the Bible, because that's the only book called "the Word of God!"

Keeping the word of God does not mean memorizing it by heart as some people think, but reading it, understanding it, implanting it in our hearts and preserving it in our lives. It is a pilgrimage of knowledge with God that leads to love between us, because man cannot love the one he does not know!

How do people get to know each other? Isn't it through constant conversation and exchanges?

We talk to God when we sit with him in prayer. We talk to him, but he also wants to talk to us! To hear and keep the word of God, and thus love him, we need to come closer to that word. Our encounter with him in his word becomes a mutual dialogue that reveals him to us and us to him, and we enter into a communion of love with him. In this way, his promise is fulfilled in us: "Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and make myself known to him.... If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him; and we will come to him, and make our abode with him."

Remember that Jesus is the incarnate Word of God. The epistle to the Hebrews tells us, "After God spoke to our fathers many times and in many ways in the past through the prophets, in these last days he has spoken to us through the Son." Hebrews 1:1-2 "And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." John 1:14.

Therefore, whoever wants to love the incarnate Word of God, that is Jesus, must love his word, that is the Bible.

† Selim Sfeir
Archevêque Maronite de Chypre