Resurrected Love

Love doesn’t forget; love remembers; and the memory of Jesus in us throbs with the power of his Word and the promise of his Resurrection. ‘Do not forget what I have done for you,’ Jesus says to us incessantly. When we are overwhelmed by sorrows of any kind, or are perhaps suffering the pangs of a devouring guilt that can tempt us to despair; when it seems that our life has reached a dead-end either through the treachery of others or through our own grave errors: then our only salvation is to believe with all our might in the power of Christ’s creative anticipation, that is, in the sovereign ability Christ demonstrated at the Last Supper and on the Cross to take an evil deed that will lead to his own crucifixion and providentially transform it into an event of Resurrection.

  Christ’s unconditional handing-over of himself to us in advance of anything we might do ought to give us the certainty that no sin we commit can defeat the Mercy of God, and that no wound that is inflicted by others on us can surpass the power to heal of the divine Physician. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus commanded us (Jn 13:34). As Christians we must strive to love as we have been loved, which is with all the tenderness of God’s whole Heart. “The measure of love,” says St. Bernard, “is to love without measure.”

Deesis, mosaic, detail, 13th-century, Hagia Sophia, Meditation by Father Simeon.