Jesus tells us in the Gospel that we are to love others as He loves us. He told the Apostles this on the night of the Last Supper. He displayed the next day what this really looks like, as He suffered and died for us on the Cross. That’s how He loves us. That’s how we are to love.
      What does love mean? What is the definition of love? A great definition of love means to will the good of the other. Love cannot be a feeling because feelings come and go. We know this just from experience. Do we always feel like loving our parents or siblings when we’re growing up? Do we always feel like loving our spouse or our children when we’re adults? The answer is no. We don’t always feel like loving another person every moment of every day, but if we have come to the intellectual conviction that we have love for another person, to express it we have to will it.
  For a scriptural example of this look at Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. What did He say? He prayed to the Father to remove this cup from Him, meaning Jesus, in His humanity, did not want to undergo His passion. In that moment, Jesus did not feel like doing what He had to do, but He did it anyway. He willed Himself to love us.
  If to will the good of the other is the definition of love, then the highest expression of this is to make a complete gift of yourself for another, to will the good of someone so much that you don’t care one bit about yourself. This is what Jesus displayed for us on the Cross. He gave Himself completely for us. He completely emptied Himself out for us. He even literally, as every drop of His blood was spilt for us.
  This might be one of the most difficult things for all of us to learn how to do. We all have a certain selfishness due to the Fall. We tend to only give to the extent that we get something in return. If do this over and over again, without getting something back, then we shut ourselves off from that person and that relationship. Is this what Jesus says in the Gospel? Did Jesus get anything in return by dying for us? We naturally tend to protect ourselves. We tend to love others to a point. We don’t go past that line in our minds because then we become too vulnerable, too uncomfortable, and we risk being hurt. None of us like pain, so we never go past that point in any relationship.
  To love like Jesus loves means being unafraid of pain. Jesus knowingly headed into pain and suffering. May we learn how to do this by going to Christ in prayer. When we pray we go straight to Him who shows us what love looks like. The fruit of prayer is virtue. We cannot say we have an authentic prayer life if it doesn’t affect how we act. So let us persevere in our daily prayer by learning from Christ. Let us ask Him to teach us what this means, to give us what we lack, to strip us of our fear and selfishness, and let us put it into practice. Christians are known to the world by their courageous examples of charity. May we answer this call by Jesus by loving not just spouse, friend, or family, but even co-worker, stranger, or that person on the street. “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”