As the Father has sent me, so I send you

Maundy Thursday is so called because that night, the night before he was betrayed, Jesus gave the command, the mandatum, that we should love one another.  Not necessarily with the love of our desiring, but with a demanding love, even a demeaning love - as in washing the feet of faithless friends who will run away and leave you naked to your enemies. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I was reflecting on this sort of love this weekend.  It is the love we are called to share when there is no cause to  hope for anything to be returned except sorrow and pain.  We love this way because we are compelled by the love we have received, driven by a need to love in response to it, knowing that our beloved cannot become who they are to be unless we dare to love so fully.  

If we are careful to receive the love we share from the One who loves us most, loving in this way may not leave us crushed in futile anguish.

I'm being melodramatic, of course, and not, at the same time. In our human shortcoming, it is very hard to keep from expecting something more in return, from being hurt when we are rejected or misunderstood or ignored. Over the years and decades, it is hard to keep from hardening ourselves against the pain we learn awaits us in loving thus.