The vine and the branches

JOHN 15:9-17

JESUS said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”

REFLECTION

LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I LOVE YOU.

This simple sentence is one of the most difficult commands Jesus has given us, if not THE most difficult commandment. To love our enemies is already extremely difficult, and we experience again and again that it seems almost impossible to love our enemies. But even more difficult is what Jesus asks in the Gospel. Why? Because here Jesus makes us aware of his love for us: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In other words, a love like that of Jesus may require us to die for somebody, even for an enemy. Jesus is not just speaking beautiful words and making nearly impossible demands. He lives what he says and what he demands. A few hours after this giving of the commandment at the Last Supper, he offers his life on the Cross for us sinners. When I stood in 2012 on St. Peter’s Square in Rome, attending the canonization of Pedro Calungsod, I was reminded of this command of Jesus and realized that it is possible to put it into practice. If a teenager was able to do it, why not I?

“Only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.

But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:7-8).