The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
“He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
I hope this can be said of me at the end of my life: that I extended belonging to others and allowed myself to rest in community. That I sacrificed and served for love. That I ached and delighted for love. That I grieved and showed deep gratitude for love. That I loved, in this way, to the end.
Today’s Gospel shows that in his final hours of freedom, Jesus turned towards his friends and betrayers in service. He modeled humble leadership in both his own action and in conversation with Peter. Peter’s pride is interesting, in not wanting to be served by the savior. There’s a sense of self-righteousness there, in trying to keep Jesus accountable to Peter’s own expectations of the hierarchy. But once he accepts Christ's radical offering, Peter’s almost annoying eagerness swings like a pendulum and he asks to be washed from head to toe.
I’ve always loved how in this exchange, Jesus basically says, “You’re missing the point.” I think we often overcomplicate His generosity. We ascribe our own motives or expectations. We load the space in between His gift and our need with feelings of guilt or shame. We dramatically flip from thinking our mess isn’t worthy of His attention to wanting all our imperfections “fixed” right away. And in these moments when I catch myself oscillating, I hear Jesus in the back of my mind saying, “Take a breath; you’re missing the point.” The point is love. That’s it. Love, to the end.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how God loves us so completely that He delights in our delight. He smiles when the breeze hits us just right. He dreamed up the smell of a summer rainstorm and the feeling of grass between our toes. And I think loving to the end also means allowing ourselves to rest, without reservation, in those moments of delight. It’s letting Christ’s love for us overflow into the way we care for our own needs, treating ourselves in accordance with our own dignity and believing with humility that we are “very good” (Genesis 1:13), because God made us so.
I think we all hope to be remembered as people who knelt before the sacredness of The Other, who recognized the sacredness in themselves, and who loved deeply in accordance with those truths. We’ll most certainly all faceplant from time to time, at least I will if my last 25 years are any indication of how easily this comes for me. But I pray I stand right back up and love again with confidence that it will one day be known, “She loved her own in this world, perhaps rather clumsily, but she loved them to the end.”
Hannah Kelley is a national security researcher in Washington, D.C.. She likes the idea of being a runner more than the reality and has a constant mixtape playing in her head. She loves local brews and whiskey cocktails but gave them all up for lent, so catch her sipping club soda with her friends and trying to pump herself up for a run in the morning.