If something new eventually gets old, then it’s not the sort of new thing which is proper to God. Anything new God does or creates will remain new forever. From our side, we can get used to the new things God does. We can start thinking of them as old. But that’s only because we ourselves get old and can begin to think like the prophet Ecclesiastes, “there’s nothing new under the sun.”

But God Himself is ever ancient and ever new – not ever old and ever new, but ever ancient and ever new. God’s newness was as fresh in ancient times as it is today and ever shall be. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and for ever, but with a sameness which is always newness. He is always the same because He is always new and vice-versa. His resurrection from the dead is His eternal newness breaking into this world and cosmos grown old in death. His loving mercy is His eternal newness breaking into the human spirit grown old in sin.

We heard in the opening prayer of the Mass that God was pleased to make us new in Holy Baptism. Baptism makes us new with the newness of God, eternally new, for it immerses us in the resurrection. In the second reading, St. John sees in his vision the new heaven and new earth: the first or old heaven and earth had passed away because the resurrection will transform the universe at the end of time. He also saw the new Jerusalem, new because it comes from heaven, from God. Then he hears God say, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He will invest all things with Himself.

It is Jesus in the Gospel who explains this newness. He gives us the new commandment that we love one another just as He has loved us. It’s not mere human affection or even heroic human love. It is divine love in His Heart and then poured into ours by the Holy Spirit. That is the newness. His love is total, self-sacrificing, matrimonial: it surrenders all to the beloved, no matter what. It is His love and His way of loving that injects the eternal newness of God into our human community and into creation itself. His love espouses us to Himself. Something is only truly and eternally new if it is infused with this love of Christ, the love he breathed and poured forth upon us when He gave us the Holy Spirit as He died on the Cross. Sin makes us old because it introduces death into our whole human nature. Baptism and the other sacraments initiate us into the opposite thrust towards the new life of the Resurrection. So that, even if we do die yet shall we live and not die for ever.

Throughout the centuries since Christ walked on earth, the invincible newness of His crucified and risen love has shown itself time and again. The very survival of the Church despite all the odds testifies that the new commandment alive in the hearts and lives of Her members continually purifies Her and raises Her up. The teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morality which affect human salvation exist and remain always new because the Truth who is the Risen Christ is always the same and always new.

Perhaps most emblematically, the power and freshness of the Church’s newness is shown in the lives of the saints. Without exception each one embodies a new expression of the new commandment. They live the new love of Christ in a uniquely new way. They show forth the ever-ancient newness of the Spirit of Christ in an inexhaustible line of witnesses to the Gospel of Love. We all have our favourite saints and it’s good to ask ourselves in what way these saints express for their time the victory and newness of Christ’s love. And then ask ourselves: how am I called to do that in my life and circumstances? Do I want to be new in Christ’s love or do I prefer to remain old?

In the prayer after Communion today, we ask God to lead us to pass from former ways to newness of life. This happened dramatically for people like St. Dismas, the good thief, St. Paul and St. Augustine. There are so many more, of course, but these three demonstrate how conversion to the love of Christ could totally renew them and, indeed, draw others to that love. Think of the martyrs for whom Christ’s love was dearer than this life itself and whose deaths ushered them into the new Jerusalem while inspiring others to emulate them. Think of the mystics. Christian mysticism can mean a wide variety of things, but at its core it is a search to experience spiritual union with God in contemplation.

In recent times, we see the unfathomable newness of Christ’s love in people like St. Damian of Molokai who gave his life to care for lepers, or St. Teresa of Calcutta who gave hers for the poorest of the poor. A bit like Elijah the Prophet, who rose like a fire, in our own day there is the witness of Blessed Carlo Acutis. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. In fifteen short years, the love of Christ so captivated his young heart that it seems the Lord just had to take him back to Himself. He entrusted this young apostle of charity and of the Eucharist with an enormous mission of attraction to Christ across the world of today.

Like Jesus, Carlo went straight to the heart of things and expressed it simply. His style was direct, uncomplicated, uncompromising. His centre of gravity was the Eucharist: from it he went forth imbued with ever new love to pour out on the poor, lonely and troubled; to it he brought back the fruits of his labours, resting like St. John on Christ’s breast in adoration and again drinking deeply Christ’s love from its source. His creativity in using the internet to promote the Eucharist and the Mother of Christ was a unique trait of his witness to Christ. The freshness of newness was seen in his love for life, for creation, for animals. One of his proverbs was “no matter what way you look at it, life is always fantastic.” Not even as he died, did Carlo ever doubt that. His last words to his mother were: “Mum, don’t be afraid. Since Jesus became a man, death has become the passage towards life, and we don’t need to flee it.” He had accepted that, because of the love of Jesus, even death has become something new, a chance to show the ultimate love, to surrender yourself to God.

Jesus commands us to love as He loved us. It’s not an ideal or a proposal, but a commandment, a must do. It calls on our obedience, not our consideration or discussion. It is necessary if we are to be the new men and women to inherit the new heavens and the new earth, to become citizens of the new Jerusalem. Encourage yourself today and every day to love with the love of Christ. Ask Him for such a love. Review honestly before Him how you love, why you love, whom you love. Don’t be afraid to love like Him. Don’t be afraid to be new. Don’t be resigned to the old. Let us stir one another to love like Christ in our own unique way. Let us be married to Him, together. Let’s be collaborators and co-lovers with Jesus in making all things new.