According to legend, St. John was the last apostle alive and young Christians would approach him to learn what it was like to have walked the dusty roads of Galilee with Jesus. But the more they pumped him for the details he would merely respond, “Little Children, love one another.” That certainly reflects the theme of the First Epistle of John we have been reading during this last week of the Christmas season. There is great signficance, therefore, that at the end of the epistle he focuses on confessing Jesus as the Christ. These are not two different things Christians do but two sides of the same thing. Loving is the what, confessing is the why. We are called to love others because we see in them the face of Christ. St. John keeps insisting that Jesus was a genuine human being who went through all that we do. There are three who testify, the Spirit, the water, and the Blood, and the three are of one accord. While Jesus was on a Spirit-filled mission he did it in the water of human life and the blood of suffering. Since Jesus shared humanity with us we are invited into divinity with him. Why do we love one another? As the song goes, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”
