In the 2022 documentary film With This Light, we are introduced to the inspiring life of the Franciscan nun Maria Rosa Leggol (1926-2020). She dedicated her life to saving over 80,000 abandoned and deprived children in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, giving them hope and new life by providing shelter, care, and education. What force of spirit has enabled Sr. Rosa to do this?

Sr. Rosa was one of the examples of the modern-day disciples of Jesus caught up in the dynamism of love. In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues his farewell discourse and assures his followers that his physical absence is not the end. In giving them the new commandment—“Love one another. As I have loved you” (v 34)—he is foreseeing the continuation of the “movement” that he has started. The motor of the movement is love, and it is new because it is not just a command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The new measure of love is Jesus’ standard: “to love as I have loved you.” The total, self-effacing love that Jesus enacted in his earthly life through his public ministry, his passion, death, and resurrection was to be the mark of everyone who wants to follow him. Jesus’ love empowers the disciples to be new persons, with new strength, new purpose of life, and new identity: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (v 35).

While it sounds as if this love is only for the intimate circle of the disciples, we know in real life that love expands to embrace all. And that is the witness of Christian love that we have seen in the past and which continues to the present. The commitment of Jesus’ disciples has always been to empower persons, especially the marginalized—the least, the last, and the lost.

Sr. Rosa’s life as mentioned above was proof of the power of this love that encourages and inspires others. But at times, the same act of Christian love can call Jesus’ followers to total self-offering, to the point of the shedding of blood. On September 10, 2023, the Church beatified a Polish family murdered by the Nazis in 1944 for assisting and sheltering Polish Jews. The Ulma family made up of the couple Josef and Wiktoria together with their seven children, including the unborn child Wiktoria was carrying at that time, became a model of absolute love in the manner of Christ’s total self-offering.

Indeed, we might not know what ultimate expression of Christian love will be asked of us to show our true identity as followers of Christ. Be that as it may, the call for us is to consistently remain in the love of Christ from which we draw the power to steadfastly choose to love and to serve as needs arise.

After Paul and Barnabas had proclaimed the good news to that city and made a considerable number of disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith, saying, “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.” They appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, commended them to the Lord in whom they had put their faith. Then they traveled through Pisidia and reached Pamphylia. After proclaiming the word at Perga they went down to Attalia. From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now accomplished. And when they arrived, they called the church together and reported what God had done with them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.

“I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.” or “Alleluia.”

When Judas had left them, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”