In today’s Gospel, we hear that Jesus gave a new commandment to love one another. Jesus tried to bring the Spirit of love to a small group of his disciples. One of the interpretations from this passage (from apocalyptic perspective) is that Jesus gave two choices for his disciple: to follow God’s standard or to follow the standard of Satan. Satan as the ruler of the world has his own standard; because the world is evil, to love the world’s standard would be taking part in its evil deeds. The standard of Christ, however, involves a mutual love and this love is so unique because it will be modeled after Jesus that demonstrated his love for us by dying on the cross. But in the end, Jesus failed because one of his disciples, Judas, chose the standard of Satan. While the other disciples did not join Judas, they also chose a standard of Satan to a lesser degree; ten of his disciples ran away, and one denied him publicly.
This is one of the cores of our Christian faith. Redemption has been designed with losers in mind. Redemption is filled with words like salvation, repentance, and forgiveness. Thus, it is only the losers and the sinners who need salvation, repentance, and forgiveness. Redemption is indeed about the second chance as we can always learn and build success out of our failure. If there is one word to capture the Christian faith, it is forgiveness. Jesus is willing to take you as you are with your past and forgive you so as to allow you to begin all over again with the clean slate. God is able and willing to forgive you and enable you to start a life brand new to cover all your past. That is the beauty of the Christian faith. We have a savior who is willing to forgive us and to help us to start a new life all over again. Peter denied Jesus, but Jesus gave him a second chance and he later become the leader of the Church. Similarly, St. Paul began his career as the persecutor of Christianity, but God turned him into one of the greatest missionaries.
As we enter the fifth week of Easter, let us ponder and reflect that our sinfulness is part of us because through our failure we can come closer to Christ who will transform us from a stone that was rejected into the cornerstone.