In today’s Gospel, Our Lord says: “I give you a new commandment: love one another.” This is a very famous saying of Jesus. If we reflect upon these words, however, they can strike us as rather peculiar.
The “new commandment” of Our Savior is simple. Love one another. This, of course, is a central precept of the Christian life. Nonetheless, it is difficult to see how this commandment is anything really new. Love one another. This is not something that the human race only learned about through Jesus. In other words, human persons have known that they are supposed to love one another from the very beginning. Indeed, the inclination to love others—to relate to others in a way characterized by goodness—is something written into the very fabric of our humanity. Human nature is a nature inclined to loving relations. Even the natural law teaches us that we ought to love one another.
Hence, we can legitimately ask, what is so “new” about this new commandment?
The key to understanding the newness of this new commandment comes in the following sentence: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Jesus explains that the love we are commanded to have towards others is not a generic or even a natural love. This love is something quite specific—quite different. It is Christ’s own way of loving. And this type of love is radically “new.”
The commandment to love as Our Lord loves us is a radically different kind of love. It is a love that is beyond the natural capacities of human persons. In and of themselves, human persons cannot love as Jesus loves. Why? Because Jesus is not a human person. He is a divine person—the Second Divine Person of the Holy Trinity. The Eternal Word itself. Thus, only a divine person can love as Jesus loves.
Mere human persons are naturally incapable of loving as Jesus loves because human persons are not—naturally—who Jesus is.
Consequently, the only way that human persons can love as Jesus loves is if they do not love in and through themselves. The only way that human persons can love as Jesus loves is if they love Jesus and all things in and through Jesus himself. Seen in this light, Our Lord’s new commandment is, indeed, really new. But it is not a newness that resides within or originates from us ourselves. Rather, this new way of loving originates from Jesus himself—the love of a divine person.
“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”
Hence, the new commandment that Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel is not just a different way of acting. Fundamentally, he gives us a different way of being. Jesus invites us to be fully united to him—to his divine personhood, to his being, to his identity. Only those who are united to Jesus—who find their identity in him—can love as he loves. Why? Those who find their identity in Jesus only live and act in and through the life and power of Jesus himself.
This new commandment, then, is not just an exhortation for us to change our attitudes, our motivations, or our behaviors. It is a commandment that encompasses the whole of our being and our activity. Because of the love Jesus has for us, we are brought close to his heart. Because of his love, his sacred heart is truly united to our hearts, and our hearts are really united to his heart. Christ’s love changes us. Really and truly. And how does Christ’s love change us? It enables us—in all aspects of our thinking, desires, and affections—to live, to know, and to love in and through him.
“I give you a new commandment: love one another.” In other words, Our Lord commands us to live in his love. And this supernatural—saving!—love is truly new.
