The New Commandment

Introduction

Most of us are familiar with Jesus’ new command, but I’d like to write it down all the same: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another”(Jn 13: 34). Or else:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15: 12).

The new commandment is about love. Given that Christ’s love is our model, the question arises:

Are we all asked to redeem the world dying of a broken nose and swollen heart, our head pricked with thorns, our hands and feet nailed to a cross?

Hmm, yeah, you're right. It seems the answer is: NO. Actually, Christ’s sacrifice was done “once for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7, 27b).

Chirts's command is not requiring every Christian to physically die on a cross.

But then, what’s the command requesting exactly? The following sections answer from the point of view of Christian liturgy. Specifically, I’ll contend that Christ is asking us to offer ourselves as food for our brothers and sisters at Mass.

Defining Christ's love

If you flip through the New Testament, you’ll find this understanding of love: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1Jn 3: 16). And again:

"No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (Jn 15: 13).

Now, it seems that Christian love primarily consists in laying down one’s life. So, yawn!, we face the same question once again: What does that mean? How can we lay down our lives? Do you think we might become obedient to Jesus’ command without getting to the point of physical death?

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Active participation in the Divine Mystery

Donating our time, money, dresses and any other resources we may have to the poor is a good and perfect way to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. No doubts about that. And yet, look, I won’t be focusing on it. Rather, I will concentrate on this other fact:

What we do in our daily activity as Christians is not detached from what we do in the liturgy, but mirrors and enacts it.

The Second Vatican Council issued a constitution on the scared liturgy wording this very fact thus:

"The liturgy is the outstanding means whereby the faithful mayexpress in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church" (SC 2).  

Yes, Sir! It is so. Our Eucharist celebrations have the power to enable any Christians to take part in Christ’s mystery, that is, his death and resurrection, disclosing to the world the nature of the true Church.

The true Church is a community, whereby all members are being called together “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1Pt 2, 5).

As regards our opportunity and right to unite with Christ and draw upon the riches of its mystery through the liturgy, the Catechism of the Catholic Church further emphasizes that Christ himself has already done it for us, and we only need to beg him to perfect us and help us to become one with him:

"Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. «By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man». We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh and as our model: «We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church […]. For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us»" (CCC 521).

Completing what is lacking

Celebrating the Eucharist might well be a chief way of taking part in Christ’s mysteries laying down our lives for one another. Ideally, we would just need to consciously offer ourselves, with all our heart and strenght, right while we are at Mass, asking to be washed in the blood of the lamb and be born anew out of water and Spirit. This way, we would become one with Christ, for “anyone united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1Cor 6: 17).

The true Church is a community where everybody has the liturgical right and opportunity to spiritually accomplish the stages of Jesus’ life in their flesh, “completing what is lacking in Christ’s tribulations for the sake of its body, that is, the Church” (Col 1: 24).

What Christ’s afflictions are missing seems to be nothing but ourselves – we’ve not become spiritually united with him in one body yet. Actually, taking active part in the earthly liturgy could be understood as consciously offering the community of Saints what they still lack in heaven, that is, our perfected participation in the heavenly liturgy as royal priests:

"In the earthly liturgy, we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle" (SC 8).

Now, lift up your eyes and look around. Sant Paul’s might really refer to our spiritual workings in the true Church when he says:

"The ministry of this liturgy not only fills up completely what the Saints are lacking, but also overflows to God through many thanksgivings (2Cor 9: 12).

Getting united with Christ at Mass could be the way to become broken bread for our brothers and sisters and give them something to eat. When we become one spirit with Christ, we are participating in the riches of “the living bread having come down from heaven” (Jn 6: 51a). This participation might then grow bigger resulting into a first-person radiant experience of the fact that:

"If you offer your life to the hungry and satisfy the life of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday" (Is 58, 10).

Our life

If you lay down your life, your gloom shall be like the noonday. What a radiantly bright experience would that be! But, hey, sister, let me ask you something: "What should we mean by 'life'? What does this word refer to?"

Well, brother, the English word life translates the Hebrew word nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ). The word nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ) refers to our psychophysical resources, such as our instincts, our ego and our will of power. It stands for our psychophysical structure, what the New Testament calls either soma psychikon (σῶμα ψυχικόν), that is, psychic body, or more generally, psyche (ψυχή). This last word is variously translated as life or soul.

Hence, well, mm, right, okay, we can say it at last: Laying down our life is - scripturally speaking - a matter of offering our psychophysical structure.

A true widow

Celebrating the divine mystery to become one in Christ is not exclusive right and use of the clergy. All baptized are invited to become one spirit with Christ and chant: “The LORD is the portion of my share and my cup” (Ps 16: 5a). Each member of the true Church has the right and opportunity and duty – let me stress this: DUTY – to learn to minister as royal priests in heaven.

The true Church is a widow on Earth. It is a poor Church, a Church for the poor. She doesn’t lift up her neck on high claiming to be “in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind” (Eph 5, 27). On the contrary, she confesses her sins waiting for all of her members to become one in Christ and begs to be “granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure” (Rv 19, 7).

For this to be possible, however, the clergy are invited to sacramentally give themselves up for the Church, “just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5, 25b).

The abundance of those who administer the riches of Christ has to be given to each single member of its body in the liturgy, so that the abundance of some balances the needs of others: “It is a question of equality”(2Cor8: 13)[1].

As regards this last point, Jesus’s words on the offering of a poor widow could help us frame a closing picture:

“This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all her livelihood (bios)” (Mk 12: 43-44).

Conclusions

Thinking about the Lord’s command of laying down our lives, Saint John queries:

“We ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the livelihood (bios) of the world and sees their brother or sister in need and closes their viscera from them?” (1Jn 3: 17).

The present paper has argued that Saint John’s question urges us to give our lives to the poor not only through charity out in the street, but also and primarily through active participation in Christ’s mystery at Mass. This idea has been linked to the real nature of the true Church on Earth – She is a widow waiting to receive her husband by resurrection, not a bride.

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[1] Damiani (2019) specifies how the balance between needs and abundance of riches might be achieved, and illustrates that women have an irreplaceable sacramental role in the true Church.

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REFERENCES

CCC, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II (1992, 1997) and Pope Francis (2018), available at https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

SC, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), Pope Paul VI,available at https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html

Alessandra Damiani (2019), Il Grande giorno della festa, Genesi, Torino (ISBN9788874147366).

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