1 John 4:20
If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Homily:
Where you are and who you are with, is where and who you must start with. Wherever life leads, you will come back full circle to the start, someday. Why not plant the seeds of the fruits you will like to meet.
Grand sacrifices of love to God, while ignoring our neighbour, only feeds our ego.
Why do we hate our brother?
Let us not debate or justify the reasons.
It is simply because we have either not yet forgiven him or not yet forgiven ourselves.
In our relationship with God, we fall short continually and He forgives continuously.
He does us no wrong, so we have nothing to forgive. Bliss.
But in our relationship with other humans, we do not have a monopoly of wrongdoing.
We give wrong, we get wrong. We give right, we get wrong. We give wrong, we get right. Unfair.
We must thus learn to forgive, just as we are continuosly forgiven by God.
In fact, Jesus Christ flips it in Matthew 6:12 –
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
He ties God’s forgiveness of our failings, to the measure of our forgiving others. Profound.
We say The Lord’s Prayer often, and we will be judged by it someday.
Forgiveness is one of the sacrifices of love.
Who do you need to forgive? Who do you need to love? The name that comes up as an answer to the former question, is an answer to the latter question.
