Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.
John writes to the Chosen Lady. He is referring to the Church. In many ancient languages, the word for church was considered a feminine noun. He refers to her children, the people who make up the church.
He expresses joy that some of the Church’s children are walking in the truth. He seems to be saying that some of them are not so walking. He renews his teaching and the commandment from the Lord to love another. For John, love is walking in the way of the Lord, nothing less and nothing more.
Tied in with the commandment to love is the teaching that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Jesus Christ, being God already, took on human flesh and was born into this world as every human being is born into this world. To acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is to say that God so loved us as to become one of us. We cannot truly love unless we accept that, God, who is completely good and loving, has valued human life so much as to take up human life by coming in our human flesh.
God has given us humans value, first by creating us, and secondly by becoming one of us, completely human. Our flesh is good because it is human flesh. God made it and God has it, the same flesh that we have. It is not “progressive” to despise our humanness. It is, rather, progressive to acknowledge that our flesh is good, and that God has become one with our flesh in Jesus Christ. “Whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.”