Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter
(Acts 15:22-31; John 15:12-17)
Sr. Marie Chin was a Sister of Mercy from Jamaica who became
famous as a speaker on the spirituality of mercy. She told the story of how she discovered
mercy with the help of a leper. When she
was in secondary school she accompanied a woman religious to a leper
colony. Knocking on the door of one of
the huts, they heard a voice from inside say, “Come in.” Entering, she saw
something that repulsed her. The leper,
named Miss Lillian, had a completely deformed face. When she stretched out her arm, which was
little more than a stump without fingers, to the youth, Marie was taken aback
again. “Go on,” Miss Lillian prodded, “put
your hand in mine.” Marie responded, “I
can’t; I’m afraid.” The leper woman said,
“Yes, you can.” Marie said that she did
not know where the grace came to touch the rotten flesh, but suddenly she was
shaking hands with the leper. The story may help us to understand why Jesus has
to command us to love one another.
As anyone over twenty should realize, love is often not
easy. Fyodor Dostoyevsky called love in
action “a harsh and dreadful thing.”
Love, after all, requires commitment and often suffering as well. We could never love everybody, and some of us
might never love anybody without Jesus’ command. We also need Jesus’ help to accomplish the seemingly
impossible feat of loving as he loved.
Let us not worry if we do not feel affection for
others. Affection is not of the essence
of love. We must, however, treat
everyone with respect. Those for whom we
feel a particular repulsion we can, at least, pray for. We pray that they receive God’s grace to
become better people and to know His eternal love.
