Joke : "What does agape love mean?” asked the teacher.  “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's agape love."

“What is love?” is a title of a song, written by Dee Dee Halligan, that suggested that love caused pain and hurt. Is love all about hurting and pain? Is love all about giving and not receiving? Is love all about what one can do while the other does not care? Is love all about what one can say and do has to be in the mind of the other? Is love all about possession, hurting, and pain? Is love all about loving others and not oneself? Is love all about loving God and not others or both? What is love, the love of a new commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, love one another?

In today’s Gospel, Saint John described a scene when Judas received the morsel from the hand of Jesus, he left, and Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” The moment that Judas left was the moment of coming closer to the passion and the death of Jesus. Why was it his passion and death coming and it was also a glorified moment at the same time? Was it only in suffering and passion that the Lord Jesus was glorified? Would he be glorified if he didn’t have to suffer passion and death? Or was it both suffering and glory the two sides of a reality? Welcome to our human club. It seems that suffering and glory are the two sides of a coin of the reality of human beings. As human beings, one cannot avoid either one but learn to accept and embrace them.

Jack Dempsey, a light heavyweight boxer championed from 1919 to 1926 recalled one of his champions. He could only fall into sleep for an hour after his champion match, he woke up all sweat. He dreamt that he lost his champion, and he couldn’t go back to sleep. He decided to drive out to get the newspaper to read the news to ease himself. Reading the news about his championship, thoughts came to his mind. He finally learned that all his energy, his time, and his training were to get what they called the trophy which only excited him for a few hours. His suffering and glory ended at the age of 87. At his passion and death, Jesus was glorified for the sake of the salvation of the whole human race. Unlike Jack Dempsey, his suffering and glory left him the reality of glory only lasted for a short time, but for Jesus, his glory gave us hope that one day, we will be glorified with him in his heavenly kingdom.

The new commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.” This is how people will know that they are his disciples if they love one another. Why was that new commandment to love one another and not to love God? Can one separate the love of God and the love of one another? Or rather, these, to love God and to love one another, are the two sides of the true and only one love? Indeed, can one love God without loving others? Or can one love others without loving God? Why did Jesus emphasize the love of one another rather than the love of God? Who are we, and who is God? Aren’t we human beings that there is time to be born and there is time to be taken away from this earthly life? God, on the other hand, is eternal. Since we are finite creatures, we should be able to love one another more easily than to love God who is infinite. It doesn’t mean that we cannot love God. But if we cannot love one another whom we can experience with our five senses, how can we love God whom we cannot even see?

Also, as a finite being, or rather corrupted being by sin, we might put on a fake face of love for God. If we pay attention to the love that we have for God, we might be able to realize that we love ourselves rather than God when we say that we love God. We love God because he is good, merciful, generous, slow to anger, and rich in kindness. He has the power to shower down blessings on us, and he also has the power to take away everything we have. We love God so that we can benefit from that love. This love seems to be like the love we have for those who are rich, who have high standards and power in life. It seems that we love those people, but in reality, we love ourselves because we love them for our benefit. Make no mistake, Jesus gave his new commandment to ask those who wanted to be his disciples to love one another. How do we love one another?

We might not have a problem loving one who loves us, who always agrees with us, or who is our loved one. However, can we love one who does not like us, does not have the same point of view as us, or does not go in the same direction and has many other differences from us? To love one another is the new commandment to be the disciples of Jesus, from the Acts of the Apostles reported in today’s first reading, Paul and Barnabas after proclaiming the good news to the people and making a considerable number of disciples, encouraged them saying, “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Or rather, to observe the new commandment to be Jesus’ disciples, they were reminded to undergo many hardships. To love someone is not to hurt or to cause pain, but rather, to learn to endure to love the person. A new way of love that Jesus commanded us is to love one another. To love one another is to love the Lord. The decision is yours.