Is loving our neighbor really that difficult?

John the Evangelist, the probable writer of the fourth gospel, spoke and wrote often about love. “God is love…and if anyone says that he loves God whom he does not see but does not love his brother or sister whom he does see, he or she is simply a liar.”

John was certain he was correct.  This is why John often sat hours with his young followers gathered around him. One day one of his young students suggested: “Teacher you never stop talking about love: God’s love for us and especially our love for one each other.” And then, looking sheepishly at John, finished with this request: “Why don’t you tell us something else?”

 John, the disciple who once laid his head on Jesus’ shoulder at the Last Supper, replied: “Because there is nothing else as important.  If we master love, we have mastered everything Jesus’ taught.”  

“Love is the only pathway toward our human destiny, heaven, and, more importantly, leads to the feet of God who is love” he said. We cannot say “yes” to loving God without saying “yes” to loving our neighbor. Neither can we say “yes” without including everyone in our acts of love.

Jesus is perfectly clear about this. If we come to place our gift at the altar and remember we are nursing a grudge against even one neighbor, we must leave our gift and immediately go first and make peace with our neighbor.  This and this alone is the only way to offer our gift. God only wants our gift if first we can love and be at peace with our neighbor. 

John writes this important act in his gospel: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. This then, is what I command you: love one another.” What God is saying to us clearly and simply is that we cannot have a relationship of love with God whom we can’t see unless we first have a relationship of love with our neighbors we can see. Jesus is simply being clear.

As a Christian, this may seem like an impossible goal. It may be easier to love the God we don’t see, rather than the neighbor we do see. God knows what he is saying. If God can do it, he wants us to try too. Because “whatever we do to the least of God’s children we do to God, and whatever we don’t do to the least of his children we do to God.”

John ends with this statement, “Everyday God awaits our response!”