The gospel of John, which we have been reading during Mass the past days, strongly shows that love is best expressed in obedience.

At the end of this Sunday’s Gospel, we see this statement: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

The supreme act of loving obedience is Christ dying on the Cross. His obedience was nurtured through the years, particularly in the three years of his public ministry that led to and culminated on the Cross.

How does one get to this supreme act of obedience? How does one love and love greatly?

The Filipino word for one who is obedient is “masunurin.” This lead us to better understand the path to the supreme act of obedience and loving greatly—which made the Cross and the Resurrection possible.

Personal relationship

The Ignatian graces of the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercise give us the framework of the process. Loving obedience begins with a personal relationship with Christ, to see Christ more clearly in our life, as a companion and a fellow pilgrim who is present—a presence that guides lovingly our day to day life.

This seeing of Christ more clearly is the experience of self-awareness and self-acceptance. Christ, being fully human, also experienced this on the first and already definitive moment in his baptism: “This is my Beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”

He was aware of who He was and what His mission was—the Beloved Son who will fulfill the will of the Father. His mission was His Father’s will: “I came to do my Father’s will. I came to establish the Kingdom of my Father.”

One of our professors in the seminary once said that Christ’s experience of Joseph’s fatherhood must have been so deep and powerful that, when He described who God is to Him, He called God “Father.”

Naming someone and naming a relationship, is an act of love. To call someone “friend” is to express one’s love for the person as a friend. Calling Christ “Lord” describes the relationship of his disciples with Christ as the Risen Lord.

When people say, “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior,” it is an expression of the love they have experienced from Christ, a love that transformed them and gave them the confidence that they are saved or redeemed.

To see is to enter the relationship with the other. This was the case of the first disciples when Christ, meeting them for the first time, invites them: “Come and see.”

Seeing Christ is seeing love—our life filled with love because He “gave himself up” for us in the act of His loving obedience to His Father. This love becomes the meaning of our lives and beyond it, moving us to loving obedience—to act with devotion and dedication to the one we love.

This is the point of transformation, the choice to follow Him. The seeing, the relationship, the loving, and the appreciation of His person, come together in this choosing.

The loving obedience, being “masunurin,” leads us to follow Christ. Loving obedience is a choice to see and to accept the love and grace from Christ; and out of gratitude to love Him in return, by following Him.

In the movie “Ignacio de Loyola,” a scene in the River Cardoner shows Christ telling Ignatius: “Remember, my soldier, I loved you first.”

Christ chose Ignatius and he responded by offering and returning everything to Christ. Ignatius asks to be used according to Christ’s will and that he be given God’s love and grace. This is the supreme act of loving obedience. —CONTRIBUTED