Thursday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 19, 2022

John 15:9-11

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.”

Perhaps the Lord Jesus most effectively made it clear to his Apostles that while he was the Messiah, he was not the one taught by the Pharisees, by telling them that he loved them.  It is hard to imagine a military or political leader telling his followers that he loved them.  Most of the time, such leaders prefer to build up an aura of fear around themselves.  The Lord’s profession of love sets him quite apart from these.  And this one who loved them showed himself no ordinary leader.  He had spent himself in works of mercy up and down Galilee and Judea, so much so that St. John wrote, “If they [the Lord’s works] were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written” (John 21, 25).  This was also the one who had astounded them with a powerful miracle to save their lives: “What manner of man is this, for the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matthew 8, 27).  

“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.”  They have seen his love for the Father in his relentless work and in his nights of prayer.  They will see it perfectly revealed in his dying on the Cross in obedience to the Father’s will.  They can surmise from this how great the Father’s love for his Son is that results in such a response.  The Lord states that as the Father has loved him with an infinite torrent of love, so does he, the Son, love his Apostles.  From this we also know how much he loves us.  “Remain in my love.”  That is, “abide” in my love.  The Greek word also means “to lodge” and “to await”.  To “abide” in the love of Jesus does not mean to stay in a static position with him.  Our love is to grow as we accept his invitation to intimacy with him, and we should live in expectation of the full realization of his love to be revealed to us in heaven.

“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.”  To keep the commandments of the Lord is both a sign of our love for him and a way to deepen our love for him.  Day after day we strip off our love for worldly things and pleasures until our sole delight is the Lord Jesus.  “Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”  So has the Lord Jesus stripped himself of the form of his divinity — “emptying himself” — out of obedience to his Father (cf. Philippians 2, 7).  

“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”  The lover delights in knowing that his beloved knows of his love and that his beloved rejoices on account of it.  The greatest human experience is to know that one is loved.  The Lord Jesus deeply desires us to know this, and that there is nothing he would not do for us.  This should be our response to knowing his love, to seek to do all things for him who has so loved us.