The New Commandment

The New Commandment is still new. It is always going to be new. It is new every day for each one of us. We all need to struggle in two areas that begin with CH: charity and chastity. It has to do with our bodies and people’s bodies. We are not pure spirits, we are not angels. We have bodies and we bump into each other, for good or for bad. We rub against each other, polishing our characters on the way. We are attracted or repelled by others. We are not a hundred dollar note that everybody likes.

There is story about Jesus while going around with his apostles, a beautiful woman approached him. She asked him for the gift of love: “Everybody loves me because I am beautiful, but I don’t love anyone.” Jesus asked her: “Are you ready to climb up the mountain?” She answered: “I want to be happy.” Jesus transformed her beauty into ugliness. She became short, fat and ugly. Now she had to give herself. We are created to love, either we know it or not, either we like it or not. It is engraved in our nature. The more we love the happier we are. The more we long to be loved, the more miserable we become. The more we give ourselves, the more we forget about our problems. Hell is to be alone with yourself for ever.

Jesus gives us the measure of our love: “As I have loved you.” What? This is impossible. God cannot asks us something impossible. God is not cruel. He will help us to do it, if we want it. It is not easy, but it is not impossible. His love is infinite but we are limited. It is an infinite love of a limited creature.

Once an abbot of a Monastery was worried about the lack of charity among the brothers. He went to see a holy man to see what he could do to change it. The holy man told him that one of his brothers was Jesus. He said that it was impossible, but the holy man reassured him. Going back to the Monastery, he began to think who it could be. The librarian? No, he spends the whole day reading books. The cook? He is eating all the time. The porter? He usually gossips about what happens outside. The tailor? He can hardly cut a straight line. The barber? He is drinking beer while shaving your beard. When the abbot arrived to the Monastery, got together all the brothers and told them what the holy man had told him: he said that one of you is Jesus; I don’t think so, but I tell you this just in case. All the brothers began to think who could be Jesus, and the whole atmosphere of the house changed. This is the secret: to try to see Jesus in every person.

Pope Francis once said: “Find someone who has never spoken ill of another person, someone who has never judged another, and they would qualify for immediate canonisation.”Inside the Vatican Pope Francis has placed an icon of the Virgin Mary holding a finger to her lips, entitled Our Lady of Silence. Just to remind people working there that they shouldn’t gossip. Saint Phillip Neri gave a woman a penance to take a feather pillow, go to highest tower in the town and scatter the feathers. She came back saying that she did it. He asked her: now go, and get all the feathers back. She answered: it’s impossible.

josephpich@gmail.com