Monday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 16, 2022

John 14:21-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.  I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is taken from the Lord’s discourse at the Last Supper.

May 15 is the 23rd anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood, and May 16 is the same anniversary of my First Mass.  Please continue to pray for me so that I may carry out the will of God in offering the Mass to him and providing the Sacraments to his people.  I have thought long and hard over the years over why he picked me to be a priest, and it seems to be that he uses the least likely things to achieve his great purposes.  This reveals his power to the world and also to the person he uses, who is under no delusion that he has accomplished anything on his own.  It is all God, with a sliver of effort of our own.  His greatest purpose is the offering of the Mass, through which grace pours forth to the world that it might be saved.

“Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me.”  Those who receive the Lord’s commandments and understand them are said to “have” or “possess” them.  Knowing God’s Law was considered by the Israelites to be of inestimable value: “Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches” (Psalm 119:12–14).  Those who obey his commandments do so out of their love for him, not simply because it is good policy for them to do so.  The obedience we show God comes out of love, as in the case of children towards their parents, and not fear, as in the case of slaves towards their masters.  “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”  That is, whoever loves the Son will know the love of the Father in his heart.  The Lord Jesus “reveals” himself to those who love him through the intimacy of prayer.  True love makes intimacy possible, by which a person comes to profoundly know another person.  This, in turn, nurtures the love already present.

“Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”  St. Jude asks a good question.  But Almighty God, from all eternity, had planned that his Son would grant humans a share in the work in their own salvation.  “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”  The follower of Jesus thus becomes not a proponent of some philosophy but a dwelling place.  The Greek text says: “We will bring ourselves to him and make for ourselves a dwelling from him”.  That is, the Father and the Son do not merely take up their abode within the believer but fashion an abode for themselves from him.  This is the work of grace.  As “dwellings” in which the Father and Son reside, then, we go forth to the world in order to convert it.  It is their work, and we cooperate in it.  

“Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.”  The Lord Jesus reminds the Apostles of the union of the Father and the Son.  In loving and obeying the Son, we love and obey the Father.  Whoever keeps the commands of the Son, which we help to spread, keeps the commandments of the Father.

“I have told you this while I am with you.”  The Greek text says, “while I live with you.”  The Lord was not simply “with” us by way of a brief accompaniment, but he lived with us very deliberately, taking a very real part in our life, though without sin.  “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”  “I have told you this” refers to the teaching about the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, the Son explains, will also dwell within the believer so that he will know what each person must be taught and what he does not recall that he might remind him.  Thus, “Dp not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; 20 for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19–20).  The Holy Spirit will speak through the one who preaches the Gospel, the one who loves and obeys the Lord Jesus.