As follower of Christ, as Christians, our lived are renewed in Christ by virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, affirmed by our own free will, through the Sacrament of Confirmation (i.e. Ephesians 4:17-32). This means more than professing faith in Christ and attending Mass. A true Christians follow Christ and his teaching, which is summed up with to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind (Matthew 22:37; Deuteronomy 6:5) and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39; Leviticus 19:18). On the night before his death, Christ gave the new commandment of love, saying:
I give you a new commandment: love one
another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how
all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John
13:34-35).
In these words, Jesus implies that we are to imitate
him, his way of loving us.
As an apostle, Paul was an imitator of Christ,
encourages us to imitate Christ (i.e. 1 Corinthians 11:1). So he wrote to those
whose lives are renewed in Christ to be followers of Christ:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with
which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger,
shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be
kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven
you in Christ. So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to
God for a fragrant aroma (Ephesians 4:30-5:2).
Ultimately, this means to imitate God in His love.
John wrote:
Whoever is without love does not know God,
for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his
only Son into the world so that we might have life through Him. In this is
love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as
expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one
another (1 John 4:8-11, 16).
We have come to know and to believe in the
love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God
and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have
confidence on the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world. There
is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do
with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love
because He first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother,
he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love
God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from Him: whoever
loves God must also love his brother (1 John 4:16-21).
In this context, love is agape (ἀγάπη),
and this means selfless (i.e. 1 Corinthians 13:5), therefore, even
self-sacrificing love. This is truly the case to love one another as brothers
and sisters in Christ for Christians, because the one whom we follow, Christ
himself demonstrated his love for us by offering himself as the perfect Paschal
Sacrifice in our place to save us (i.e. 1 Corinthians 5:7; Hebrews 9:11-28).
Now, the question is, “Are we willing to die for
someone, so that this person’s life may be spared?”
We are not addressing the “Trolley’s Dilemma Problem”
in moral calculus. The agape, which is the central teaching of
Christianity, has nothing to do with calculation.
On the eve of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, we honor the heroic life of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who
offered his life to save a fellow prisoner in Auschwitz, July1941.
The man whose number was called to die cried out for life. Moved by compassion, Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (O.F.M. Conv.), stepped and asked a Nazi officer if he could take the man’s place. And Fr. Kolbe’s request was granted. So he was placed in a starvation chamber to die. Because he did not die as expected, he was put to death by a lethal injection on 14 August, 1941.
Some argued what Maximilian Kolbe did was an act of
devaluing life, like suicide. But such a view miss what it means to be
Christian, to observe Jesus’ teaching of love, to be imitators of Christ, who
offered his life, so that we did not have to die for our sins. Therefore, such
an argument of Maximilian Kolbe’s act of agape not only denigrate him
but also Christ, whom he imitated.
In fact, it is Christ himself who said, expounding on
his new commandment to love one another:
Love one another as I love you. No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my
friends if you do what I command you (John 15:12-14).
Does Christ teach us to devalue our lives? Does he call
us to commit morally justifiable “suicide” for the sake of a friend?
Perhaps so to some of those who do not know and
understand Christ. But those whose lives are renewed in Christ certainly
understand that this is agape not only taught and commanded by Christ
but demonstrated by him to save us on the Cross, by laying down his life.
As St. Maximilian Kolbe exemplified, we may be in situations
to save lives of others by sacrificing ours in Christ’s name. The question is, “Are
we ready to offer our lives up?” This is not an act of devaluing life but to
make life truly fulfilling in light of agape, as taught by Christ.
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