We are approaching the end of the Easter season and the great feast of Pentecost, and already the sound of the mighty wind that will descend on the apostles like fire on that day is echoing in the background of this Sunday’s readings. The great gift of the Holy Spirit when he comes is certainly charity. When the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling within us at our Baptism, he forges in us a bond of love which binds us to Jesus and through Jesus the rest of his Church. It is to this gift of love that our readings this Sunday attract our attention.

In our first reading, a group of Gentiles experienced an intense experience of being loved by God when the Holy Spirit came upon them in power, and such was their joy that they exploded with praise. St. Peter and the Jewish Christians who were with him understood that the love of God is universal, extending beyond their own nation to embrace the entire world: all of us are loved by God.

We heard St. Peter declare: ‘The truth I have now come to realize’ he said, ‘is that God does not have favorites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.’

This love of God that becomes ours, part of us, through the Gift of the Spirit is unique and personal. God does not love human beings in a general manner, such as a group or an undifferentiated mass. He loves you and me particularly and individually. As my old university chaplain used to say, God does not only like you; he loves you! We are personally cherished by God and the sign of God’s special love for us is that we love God in return.

We heard in our second reading: My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

‘Loves come from God’ because God is love. When the Spirit of God emerges from our hearts and minds, he fills our sails and moves us towards love of God and neighbor. We love God because he loves us, and his love is wind in our sails that prompts us to return his love and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But what does it mean to love God? What does it mean to love our neighbor? To answer that question, we need to look to Jesus.

Jesus makes God’s love visible and tangible because he is created by God. Jesus is a divine individual who has assumed a human nature like ours, so that through this sacred humanity God himself can love us in a way that we can see and hear and feel and understand. Jesus shows us in his own body what a human life is when it is completely docile to the impetus of the Holy Spirit.

Our second reading continues: God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. (“A reading from the first letter of St John (4:7-12) God is love”)

Initially, we have God’s love for us. Secondly, that divine love that we perceive in our human experience of love is made visible and tangible for us in the person of Jesus. Jesus fully reveals the extent of God’s love for us in his sacrifice on the cross which is offered for each one of us personally and individually. There is a third step, and Jesus emphasized this third step in our Gospel reading: we are to imitate the love of Jesus, which is the love of God, by loving one another with the same self-sacrificial love with which he loved us.

Jesus says to his disciples, and that means to you and me: This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you. A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you… What I command you is to love one another. (“Gospel – Liturgy Office”)

First, God is love. Second, his love is revealed to us, manifested to us, in the person of Jesus and especially his self-sacrifice for our sake on the cross. Third, we are called to reflect and share this divine love by loving one another with the same self-sacrificing love with which Jesus loves us. How is this possible? By our own strength, of course, it is impossible. But nothing is impossible for God. When the Holy Spirit comes, he will bind us to Jesus, and empower us to live the same kind of self-sacrificing life that Jesus lived: empower us to love God and neighbor. As St. Paul tells teaches us in Romans 8:14: ‘All those who are driven by the Spirit are children of God’. The Spirit is the wind in our sails: God himself enables us to love Him and love our neighbor. We must recognize that God loves us, and he showed us through Jesus and to love Jesus is to love our neighbor.