For God So Loved the World
Gospel Reflection for May 18, 2025, the Fifth Sunday of Easter - John 13:31-35
When he therefore was gone out, Jesus said: Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God be glorified in him, God also will glorify him in himself; and immediately will he glorify him.
Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You shall seek me; and as I said to the Jews: Whither I go you cannot come; so I say to you now.
A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. (John 13:31-35 DRA)
For this Fifth Sunday of Easter reflection, I would like to focus particularly on the Epistle, from the Apocalypse (as it was historically called by Catholics) of St. John. This is one of the most powerful and moving passages in all of Scripture and can be seen as the ultimate climax of history, when God will restore all things – not only to how they were before the Fall, but greatly surpassing anything we can imagine. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church especially like to quote this verse in relation to it: “That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Cor 2:9)
Not only will all men be resurrected, their full human personhood restored from its unnatural separation into spirit and body at death – “And they that have done good things, shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” (Jn 5:29) – but all of Creation will be reclaimed from the dominion of Satan, freed from its bondage to suffering and decay and with man reinstated to his Adamic sovereignty over it, as St. Paul so beautifully expounds:
For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us. For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: Because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. (Rom 8:18-23)
“For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” (Jn 3:16) How many of us have heard this verse before, or seen it as a bumper sticker or written on a t-shirt? It’s arguably the most-quoted Scripture verse in history (and not only by Protestants). But what does it mean to say that God loves us? According to the traditional definition, love is to will the good of another. This means that God loves us because He wills our good – and in the end, this means that He wills Himself as our end, our happiness and our perfection, since He is Goodness itself.
God longs to rescue us from our slavery to the world, the flesh and the devil, but in His Providence, He knows what is best for us: to give us time to prepare so that we may freely choose to love Him and be united with Him, not as mere automatons but as true “partakers of the divine nature”. (2 Pt 1:4) This is why Our Lord told us, “I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.” (Jn 15:15) Love is only real if it’s free, and we cannot be divinized into the perfect image and likeness of God unless we are able to love freely.
Many wonder why God doesn’t always answer our prayers. This aspect of the “problem of evil” is one of the most common causes for people falling away from the Faith or being irreligious entirely, asking how God can be called a loving Father if He lets His children suffer so bitterly, all when He has the omnipotent power to save us. But true love requires sacrifice. As the first reading says, “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.” We must love Goodness above all good things to become truly good ourselves, and we must be willing to give up the good of creatures in order to receive Goodness itself, the reality over the image, and we do this most of all by suffering like Christ and loving like Christ. This is why He told us in today’s Gospel, “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” Only by loving others as God loves us – i.e., when we do not deserve it – can we be made into the mirror-image of Christ.
But God does not abandon us to mere anticipation or resign us to perpetual suffering. Through Scripture, He shows us His love by revealing the unfathomable gifts He has in store for us. He will not leave us in our sin and darkness, or even in the bliss of Heaven which is still incomplete for us, but will return us to our glorified and spiritualized bodies and restore us to our place as shepherds of the New Heaven and New Earth, where we will fulfill our original purpose as Divine Liturgists in the new Jerusalem, with God Himself as our Temple. (Apoc 21:22)
God sees and has compassion for all of our afflictions, and He will “wipe away every tear” from our eyes. No more will we live in constant fear of pain, of death, of sin and temptation, of abuse and betrayal, of abandonment and deception, of failure and inadequacy, of rejection and loneliness, never able to rest in the good, always waiting for the next struggle and trial that life throws at us, with everything good tainted by corruption, less perfect than it could be, and with our salvation standing ever on the edge of a knife while our “hidden God” (Is 45:15) can seem so remote and inaccessible, even as He waits for us perpetually under the guide of bread and wine in the Eucharist.
No more will the Barque of St. Peter be pounded by the waves of the world or dashed against the rocks of sin – then, she will follow the light of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Stella Maris, into the safe harbors of eternal life. This is the hope that is truly salvific and the peace which, in His Farewell Discourse, Christ imparted to the apostles in the Holy Ghost: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.” (Jn 14:27)
May the certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life strengthen us against every hardship and inspire us to imitate the self-sacrificing love of Christ in all things.
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