Saturday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 13, 2023

John 15, 18-21

Jesus said to his disciples: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.”  St. John translates the Aramaic or Hebrew word the Lord used into the Greek kosmos, meaning “world” or “universe”.  He does not translate it into the Greek word for “earth”, as in “the planet earth”.  By this we learn that the Lord was not saying that the earth hated the Apostles, but the world.  The Lord speaks in negative terms of the world throughout the Gospel of St. John, and the Apostle continues this theme in his Letters.  As the Lord uses it we should understand society and its materialistic snares ruled over by the devil; and fallen human nature, which fights against our will to love and obey God.  The first we find personified in the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation: “I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written: ‘A mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications and the abominations of the earth.’ And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17, 3-6).  St. Paul writes of the second: “For the good which I will, I do not: but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it: but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7, 19-20).  By his Death on the Cross, the Lord Jesus delivers us from the power of both, yet each may persuade us to throw off the grace won for us at such a cost and to indulge ourselves to the point of destruction.

In the context of the Lord’s words, however, “the world” here means the external realm of temporary pleasures and false delights that later bring on grief and remorse, if not repentance, for the Lord’s interior existed in perfect harmony.  The influence of the devil so pervades civil society — any society and any time in history — that we can almost take for granted that if we do the opposite of what its members do and believe the opposite of what they believe, we will surely set ourselves on the right track.  

“If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.”  Those who seek their salvation in the Lord Jesus suffer from various temptations throughout their lives, but those who have given the,selves up to the world do not suffer temptations: they pursue evil and so are not pursued by it.  Therefore, we ought to fear a little when we are not suffering some temptation.  Through infirmity, weariness, gradual loss of faith, or some vice posing as a virtue that creeps slowly into our lives any of us can pass into the grip of the world from the sweet embrace of Jesus Christ.

“No slave is greater than his master.”  Although this saying seems plain enough not to have needed speaking, it is one which we, with our fallen human nature, often forget or overlook.  Times and circumstances certainly arise in which we think we know better than God does, or that if we do not act on our own accord, all will be lost.  We reject prayer and discernment as though God would only get in our way in our attempts to solve our problem.  But God knows all that is to befall us and has arranged in his marvelous providence for it to benefit our salvation.  We need to cooperate with his providence, seeking his will.  Seeking our own to the exclusion of his will always result in catastrophe.

“If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”  We should expect persecution from those who persecuted the Lord because we are members of his Body: when the wicked see us, they see Christ and attack him through us.  Though they cannot injure the Head they can afflict the members of his Body.  But this affliction is to the good for it exercises the members in their “spiritual muscles” which strengthens their faith. 

“And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”  Those who are wicked, such as the Pharisees, may claim to know the one, the Father, who sent Jesus, but they do not.  As the Lord himself points out later in his discourse: “Yea, the hour is coming, that whosoever kills you will think that he does a service to God” (John 16, 2). 

The Son of God has chosen us “out of the world”, to live according to his law and not according to the enticements offered by our society including the easy surrender to materialism, and to live in integrity through his grace.  It is, in fact, a stark choice and we can make no compromises here.  If it is true that we must “hate” our parents, brothers, sisters, and children for the sake of Jesus, then how much more true it is that we must despise the immoral things the world holds out to us, luring us to our destruction.