Friday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 20, 2022

John 15:12-17

Jesus said to his disciples: “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.”

The Lord Jesus continues to speak to his Apostles during the Last Supper.  He speaks very calmly even with his arrest, Passion, and Death nearly upon him.  Ever the servant, he teaches his Apostles to till last possible moment.

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”  His previous commandments, such as against lust and regarding the Sabbath, fulfilled the laws of the Old Covenant and so were in that sense were not new or  peculiarly his own.  This commandment, however, is.  The Lord does not merely say, Love one another.  He says, “Love one another as I love you.”  They have known his love in many ways over the course of the three years of his Public Life.  They will see the great outpouring of his love as he hangs upon the Cross, and they will know it after Pentecost when the Holy Spirit enlightens them.  They will understand that they are to love each other fully and unconditionally as the Lord has: “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.”  Friends do not normally lay down commandments for their friends, but the Lord’s commandment is to love.  We might wonder why he thought it necessary to issue a commandment to love.  Love is so desirable that everyone wants to give and receive it.  The key here is that he commands us to love as he did.  In a way, it is a permission or an exhortation, but love to the degree that the Lord intends us to have requires a commandment because it is completely self-emptying.

“I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.”  The Lord does not refer to his Apostles as “slaves” during his Public Life and the revelation that he considered them slaves might have unsettled them.  They had been slaves as compared to him, their Creator, infinite in power and majesty.  He now raises them to the level of friends — an almost impossible leap in the society of the time.  He calls them “friends” because he is revealing to them his inmost thoughts, not simply teaching them about the Kingdom of God: “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.”  It May seem to us that when the Lord called Peter and Andrew from their fishing boat that they chose to follow him, but in reality they were choosing to obey his call.  It was as if they had been waiting for his call and went immediately when it came.  They had been chosen from all eternity to be the Apostles of the Lord and they had been created with this vocation embedded in them.  They could have chosen not to obey, but they would have gone against their nature and they would have regretted their decision the rest of their lives.  The same is true for us.  Our vocation is embedded within us, whether as husbands, wives, parents, single people, priests, or religious.  Because it is embedded we can see signs of it in our preferences, our choices, and our predispositions, and others who watch us closely over the years can see these signs too.  It is up to us to discern our vocations and to follow them.

“And appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”  In whatever vocation for which we are made, our work is to go and “bear fruit that will remain.”  That is, to hand on the Faith.  We can do this within our calling in a multitude of ways.  The fruit will “remain” when we care for it.  It would be a mistake to help a person convert and then not continue to help that person grow in the Faith, or to have a child baptized and then not raise the child in the Church.  It may happen that at some time the fruit we have cared for rebels against God and his Church despite our best efforts.  Then we should persevere in prayer for that person and to maintain a good example.

“So that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.”  The Lord encourages us to pray for the graces, the virtues, and the favorable circumstances that will allow us to work for the lasting fruit he desires.  His intention is for the salvation of all people and so he will hardly refuse what we need in order to do our part in accomplishing this.

“This I command you: love one another.”  So important is this commandment that the Lord repeats it.  It is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant commandment to love one another, for now we have the revelation of the Son of God and so, with his grace, we can do more than to love one another as we love ourselves.  We can love as the Lord Jesus loves.