Easter 5C25: John 13:31-33, 34-35 "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."

A reflection on John 13:31-33, 34-35,  written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA.

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane
D08 F8NW
18 May 2025
John 13:31-33, 34-35

Welcome
Probably you are familiar with the words of the song: “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” I first came across the words in a film, Moulin Rouge, where the jingle was repeated often on purpose. The song was first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1948. The title of the song was “Nature boy”, composed by Eden Ahbez in 1947. For the composer, it was a reflection on his life and philosophy — Ahbez practiced a spiritualist philosophy called variously Naturmensch or Lebensreform.

Topic
Independently of its time and place, the words express the simple truth about us all: “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Steps
First of all, it is true about us all. We do get side-tracked, of course, into career, possessions, position and what St Luke generously calls the desire for other things. Sometimes, we get side-tracked into hurts and resentments, even small-mindedness. But in our better moments — perhaps during some critical moment or an exceptionally happy time — we do realise that life is more than all these things. Nothing really satisfies the hungry heart except to be loved and to love. No matter where we find ourselves in life: family, marriage, single, friendship, even different orientations, still “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” It comes out beautifully in a poem I’ve quoted here before: The Late Fragment by Raymond Carver, his last poem

And did you get what 
you wanted from this life, even so?


I did.


And what did you want?


To call myself beloved, to feel myself


beloved on the earth.

It is what we all want and even more what we all need.

The centrality of love for us all means that the “command” to love speaks directly to our experience and even to our need. As we heard in the Gospel,

I give you a new commandment:
love one another;
just as I have loved you,
you also must love one another.

Let me make three comments. It must seem strange that love is a commandment — surely it is meant to be natural and spontaneous? But we all know that love is a choice — we can choose to love — and we all know that love is costly. Something of the cost is hidden in the little expression “just as.” This means more than somehow copying the love of Jesus, being inspired by his example. In this Gospel, “just as” means that the love of God in Jesus is itself  continued in our love for one another. We are not simply inspired by the love of God in Jesus; instead, we draw on that love. St Paul puts it beautifully: the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Romans 5:5).

If we ask how did Jesus love, the answer is both good news and a kind of programme of conversion. In Jesus, God loves all of us unreservedly, unconditionally, not because of anything wonderful that we are, but simply because that’s what God does. God is love and whoever lives in love, lives in God. If we are to love “just as” God loved us, we embark upon a costly and exhilarating journey of inner conversion. Often, perhaps not always, we relate to people because somehow our needs are being met, people fit it with my emotional programme for happiness — and we are not too far away from manipulation and even a kind of low-grade exploitation.

By contrast, Christian love seeks the well-being of the other without any expectation of benefit to me. This is how God loves each one of us — and we are glad of it. If we are to inhabit that love fully and richly, we too must love the other simply because of who he or she is — unreservedly, unconditionally, without any expectation of benefit to me. That conversion of heart and life is costly — it doesn’t just happen. Instead, it is a choice of life-direction. Finally love is a commandment because this kind of life-transforming love is, in the final analysis, a choice. It is natural but doesn’t necessarily come naturally!

Conclusion
There is a delightful prayer in the wedding Mass which captures it all:

Love is our origin,
Love is our constant calling,
Love is our fulfilment in heaven.

In other words, “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”