When thou seest thy brother, thou seest thy Lord.
Tertutlian, De Oratione

We are told explicitly in 1 John 4.19-20, "If a man says, "I love God", while hating his brother, he is a liar. If he does not love the brother whom he has seen, it cannot be that he loves God whom he has not seen." But how can we see God in our brother? We cannot do it in honesty by a pure act of will, because we know that the character of the person is far removed from the perfection of God. Therefore, when we try to bring the person to God in our imagination, no matter how earnest we may be, we either delude ourselves or else are unwittingly condescending. Thus we may speak kindly of a person "meaning well" or "doing his or her best", when we know how flawed the performance has been, how deluded, if not ludicrously self-centred, have been the attempts to be of help.

The way forward, paradoxically, is for the time being to take our eyes off the person (who is both our neighbour and our brother), and enter into the quiet silence of God. This is called contemplation, and it is attained by a dedicated attention to the present moment. In this state the mind is lifted up to God, who in turn lifts us up when our disposition is God centred. By this is meant a giving of our very selves to the highest we may know in terms of the three ultimate values: beauty, truth and goodness. As we approach the divine presence, a peace enfolds us in which all discourse is taken up into the fellowship of God. We worship, as Moses did at the peak of Mount Sinai, and the divine energies pour into our feeble frames, transfiguring our very being. "And because for us there is no veil over the face, we all reflect as in a mirror the splendour of the Lord; thus we are transfigured into his likeness, from splendour to splendour; such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit" (2 Cor. 3.18).

As we descend from our own mountain of transfiguration, we carry the love of God with us. The light shines from us as a warmth that excludes no one from its concern. In rather the same way as the spiritual radiance of Jesus enlightened the drab faces and even duller minds of the many people he met in the course of a day's work, and lifted up to caring responsibility the coarse sensuality of the sinners with whom he dined, so, to a much smaller extent do we impart something of the divine peace we have received to our neighbours in the throes of their own travail. We may even set aflame the spark of divinity in them by the heat of our presence. It is thus that we begin to see "the real light which enlightens every man" that was fully incarnate in Jesus (John 1.9).

It is then that we can truly begin to love our brother, since the love of God flows impartially to all around us, irrespective of their moral character or personal lifestyle. Love, like God, has indeed no favourites (Acts 10.34); this is the difference between love and affection. In the love of God we can identify the other person with ourself, including the outer surface scarred with its own infirmities. Only when we can so accept and love ourself can we equally accept and love our brother; the One who first loves us all is God: we love because he loved us first (1 John 4.18).

And so we should serve our brother as we would our Lord. This was the lesson taught by Jesus to his disciples when he washed their feet just before his betrayal and passion. He identified himself with their uncleanness in order to infuse them with his holiness. Only thus is the creature accorded his or her full stature in the world of eternal values. "And indeed this command comes to us from Christ himself: that he who loves God must also love his brother" (1 John 4.21).

May my life be so dedicated to your service, Lord, that I can see the light of Jesus reflected in the faces of all who pass my way. May that light so infuse my own life that I become an instrument of your love to the world around me.