6th Sunday of Easter

Daily Meditation: 1 John 4:7-10

God is love. (1 John 4:8)

A statement like “God is love” can sound so abstract! But in today’s second reading, John follows up this revelation with a second one: God’s love is revealed to us in Jesus, who offered himself on the cross “so that we might have life through him” (1 John 4:9). And as Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel, we, too, are called to lay down our lives for one another out of love (John 15:13).

But unlike Jesus, we usually aren’t called to literally die for someone. So what does it actually look like to lay down our lives for another person?

Today’s first reading from Acts gives us a model. A Roman centurion named Cornelius invites Peter to come to his home in Caesarea, about a thirty-five-mile walk. Peter knows it is “unlawful for a Jewish man to associate with, or visit, a Gentile,” yet he goes anyway (Acts 10:28). When he begins preaching the good news to them, the Holy Spirit falls on Cornelius and the rest of the people gathered there, and they are “baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” (10:48).

Peter was doing what Jesus had commanded when he said, “Love one another as I love you” (John 15:12). He was laying down his life for these former enemies by listening to the Spirit’s leading, taking the time to journey to Caesarea, entering the centurion’s house, and then going out on a limb to baptize Gentiles.

Each day we are presented with opportunities to lay down our lives for one another out of love. It might cost us our time or our energy. It might require courage, patience, or forbearance. We might have to step out in faith. But as we do these things—even those that seem routine or mundane—we are making the abstract truth that “God is love” into a living reality. We are revealing God’s love to the world.

“Holy Spirit, open my eyes to those times today when I can love someone as you have loved me.”

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Psalm 98:1-4
John 15:9-17