Epilogue
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[11] Finally, brethren, farewell. Mend your ways, heed my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. [12] Greet one another with a holy kiss. [13] All the saints greet you. [14] The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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Commentary:
11. In his words of farewell, the Apostle once more shows his great affection for the faithful of Corinth, exhorting them to practise the fraternity proper to Christians and thus live in concord and peace (cf. I Cor 1:10-17). And, St John Chrysostom comments, he tells them what this will lead to: "Live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you, for God is a God of love and a God of peace, and in these he takes his delight. It is love that will give you peace and remove every evil from your church" ("Hom. on 2 Cor", 30).
St Paul's call to the faithful to be cheerful is particularly significant--"gaudete"(rejoice) in the New Vulgate--contains a message he repeats on other occasions: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice" (Phil 4:4; cf. 3:1). Joy is something very characteristic of Christians because their awareness of being children of God tells them that they are in the hands of God, who knows everything and can do everything (cf. note on 5:10). Therefore, we should never be sad; on the contrary: we should go out into the world, St J. Escriva says, "to be sowers of peace and joy through everything we say and do" ("Christ Is Passing By", 168).
12. On the "holy kiss", see the note on 1 Cor 16:20.
"The saints" who send greetings to the Corinthians are the Christians of Macedonia, from where St Paul is writing. Regarding this description of Christians, see the note on 1 Cor 1:2.
{1 Cor 1:2. "Called to be saints": through faith and Baptism "all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 40).
"Those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ": this circumlocution describes Christian believers (cf. Acts 9:14, 21; 22:16; Rom 10:12); what makes them different from others is that they worship Jesus Christ as Lord and God, in the same way as the faithful of the Old Covenant invoked the name of Yahweh. To be a member of the Church of God, therefore, it is essential that a person believe that Christ is God. "We believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. He is the eternal Word of the Father before time began, one in substance with the Father, "homoousios to Patri", through whom all things were made. He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and was made man. 'Equal, therefore, to the Father according to his divinity, less than the Father according to his humanity, his unity deriving not from some impossible confusion of substance but from his Person"' (Paul Vl, "Creed of the People of God", 11).}
The Visit of Nicodemus (Continuation)
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(Jesus said to Nicodemus,) [16] "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. [18] He who believes in Him is not condemned; He who does not believe is condemned already, because He had not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
{[19] And this is the judgment, that the light has come into world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. [20] For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. [21] But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God."
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Commentary:
16-21. These words, so charged with meaning, summarize how Christ's death is the supreme sign of God's love for men (cf. the section on charity in the "Introduction to the Gospel according to John": pp. 31ff above). "`For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son' for its salvation. All our religion is a revelation of God's kindness, mercy and love for us. `God is love' (1 John 4:16), that is, love poured forth unsparingly. All is summed up in this supreme truth, which explains and illuminates everything. The story of Jesus must be seen in this light. `(He) loved me', St. Paul writes. Each of us can and must repeat it for himself--`He loved me, and gave Himself for me' (Galatians 2:20)" (Pope Paul VI, "Homily on Corpus Christi", 13 June 1976).
Christ's self-surrender is a pressing call to respond to His great love for us: "If it is true that God has created us, that He has redeemed us, that He loves us so much that He has given up His only-begotten Son for us (John 3:16), that He waits for us--every day!--as eagerly as the father of the prodigal son did (cf. Luke 15:11-32), how can we doubt that He wants us to respond to Him with all our love? The strange thing would be not to talk to God, to draw away and forget Him, and busy ourselves in activities which are closed to the constant promptings of His grace" (St J. Escriva, "Friends of God", 251).
"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This [...] is why Christ the Redeemer `fully reveals man to himself'. If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity...The one who wishes to understand himself thoroughly [...] must, with his unrest and uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into Him with all his own self, he must `appropriate' and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself.
How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he `gained so great a Redeemer', ("Roman Missal, Exultet" at Easter Vigil), and if God `gave His only Son' in order that man `should not perish but have eternal life'. [...]
`Increasingly contemplating the whole of Christ's mystery, the Church knows with all the certainty of faith that the Redemption that took place through the Cross has definitively restored his dignity to man and given back meaning to his life in the world, a meaning that was lost to a considerable extent because of sin. And for that reason, the Redemption was accomplished in the paschal mystery, leading through the Cross and death to Resurrection" ([Pope] John Paul II, "Redemptor Hominis", 10).
Jesus demands that we have faith in Him as a first prerequisite to sharing in His love. Faith brings us out of darkness into the light, and sets us on the road to salvation. "He who does not believe is condemned already" (verse 18).
"The words of Christ are at once words of judgment and grace, of life and death. For it is only by putting to death that which is old that we can come to newness of life. Now, although this refers primarily to people, it is also true of various worldly goods which bear the mark both of man's sin and the blessing of God…No one is freed from sin by himself or by his own efforts, no one is raised above himself or completely delivered from his own weakness, solitude or slavery; all have need of Christ, who is the model, master, liberator, savior, and giver of life. Even in the secular history of mankind the Gospel has acted as a leaven in the interests of liberty and progress, and it always offers itself as a leaven with regard to brotherhood, unity and peace" (Vatican II, "Ad Gentes", 8).