Love is the way

 

"This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to walk just as he walked."  (1 John 2:3-11)

Various men and women, scattered all over the earth, awake every morning, embrace their cross and walk as one with Christ, who upholds them and sustains them when they think they can go no further.

In Luke’s Gospel we see Simeon, a man who has lived his dream.  "Lord, now let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled; my own eyes have seen the salvation which you prepared in the sight of every people, a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel."  (Luke 2:22-35).  What a wonderful feeling Simeon must have enjoyed, living his dream and walking in the light!

The First Letter of John reminds us that we too can "walk in the light" in our relationship with Jesus.  All we have to do is love our brother and not hate anymore.  Pretty simple.  It calls to mind the idealism we celebrated in the 60’s: peace, love, and rock and roll.  In the words of the Beatles, "all we need is love"!  Too bad it’s not that easy, especially in our world of 24-hour hateful comments on the news and in social media, social injustice, poverty, and so on.

Facing all these realities, maybe we must simply begin loving exactly where we are.  We have to love today, right now, the people God places in front of us.  I’m reminded of the song from the musical "Hair" which laments that it’s "easy to be hard" to those who are closest to us while at the same time passionately attacking the dragons of inequity and injustice.  To paraphrase the song, we have to "love the ones we’re with"; and this includes the very next person we see.

If we do love the people God puts in our path today, then loving our brothers and sisters and our relationship with Jesus become a marriage in which God’s light is revealed.  This light then illuminates the injustice and inequity in our world with hope and the glory of God!  Indeed we become with Jesus, "a light of revelation to the Gentiles and glory for your people Israel!" (Luke 2:32)

Just as Jesus is revealed to Simeon in Luke’s Gospel as a sign to be contradicted, so too is the way Christ walked itself a sign of contradiction. It’s not always a pleasant walk.  Realistically there are times when the walk is painful and confusing.  There may even be times when we veer off the path and need that "revealing light" to lead us back to where we belong.

What we celebrate this Christmas season is that we do not walk the path alone. The light is always present if we have the eyes to see it. The light is Emmanuel, which means, "God is with us." The miracle of Christmas focuses on the fact that God became one of us, to share in our life’s journey…all of our life, not just the pleasant parts of the journey, but the unpleasant as well.