Msgr. Pope on the Connection Between Love, Law, and Joy

"In the Gospel [of the Thursday of the 5^th Week of Easter], Jesus cuts right through the modern Western tendency to set law in opposition to both love and joy. He joins all three concepts and summons us to a new attitude.

"Jesus says, As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. 

"To remain, to habitually abide in God's love, has this effect: we keep the commandments. Love and law are connected as cause and effect. This is not our usual thinking. The best that Western culture will admit of law is that it is a necessary evil. While this is the best assessment of it, the more routine assessment is that law is somehow an unloving imposition by the powerful on the weak, the hierarchy on the laity, the (evil, oppressive, Pharisaical - you fill in the adjective) Church on decent people. Law is something that restrains, not something through which we experience love or joy.

"Whereas the modern world disconnects law from love, Jesus links them. Jesus says that we both experience love and show it by keeping the commandments. The keeping of the commandments is the fruit of love! Jesus sets forth a vision whereby we, having experienced God's love, desire and rejoice in His commands."

In a recent commentary, Monsignor Charles Pope (pastor of Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Parish, Washington, DC) reflected on God's law as an expression of His love and our obedience to His law as an expression of our love.

To access Msgr. Pope's complete post, please visit: 

Community in Mission: On the Paradoxical Connection Between Love, Law, and Joy (18 MAY 17)