First Reading: Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48;
Second Reading: 1 John 4:7-10;
Gospel: John 15:9-17
The love of God is universal, reaching out to everyone. The Holy Bible gives account of God’s love to humanity from the foundation of the world. John in his writing defines God as love. Such an affirmation is simple and absolute. In the Gospel Jesus declares that the intimate relationship that the disciples have with Jesus and God the Father must be translated into the disciples’ loving one another as Jesus has loved them. Jesus tells his disciples that he has chosen them personally and commissioned them to bear fruit in the Father.
Today’s Gospel passage chosen from the last discourse of Jesus is the continuation of last Sunday’s Gospel. We had the image of the vine and branches last Sunday to describe the intimate association between Jesus and his followers that was necessary if the disciples had to produce fruit for eternal life. In today’s Gospel Jesus urges his followers to abide in his love and to love one another. This love for neighbour must have as its model and exemplar Christ’s love for his disciples, which made him, lay down his life for them. The disciples are not Christ’s servants but his intimate friends and associates in his work. The passage also emphasises the divine mutuality as Jesus explains that as the Father loves the Son, so does the Son love the disciples and the disciples are to love one another. Everything is interconnected and the word used is “remain”. However, the purpose of this divine mutuality is to bear fruit, meaning that the disciple must do something. Jesus says that they will bear lasting fruit in their life work if they trust in God and are motivated by true love for God and neighbour.
The disciples are commanded by Jesus to love one another as he had loved them. This brings us to the important question as to how Jesus showed his love to his disciples. To grasp the full meaning of the command of Jesus we must go back to where this commandment first emerged, namely at the washing of the feet. Jesus after washing the feet of the disciples reflected for them the significance of this gesture. Most obviously it signified service and in the case of Jesus it indicated the ultimate service he would offer his disciples by laying down his life for them. He also demonstrated to them that he was serving them not as a superior serves an inferior but as an equal. He put on the clothing of a servant and washed the feet of his disciples. The sense of equality is expressed by the term friendship. He and the disciples are friends in the deepest sense of that term. Once again Jesus repeats the commandment to love one another as he has loved them. They ought to show their love to each other as friends.
Today’s Gospel gives us two models of personal relationship to Jesus: as a servant or as a friend. At any given point in our faith journey one of these two models is dominant. Either we see our relationship to Christ mainly in terms of master-servant or in terms of friend-friend. Jesus is seen more as a master to be feared, respected and obeyed than as a friend to love in intimacy and familiarity. Today’s Gospel challenges us to rethink our relationship with Christ because, evidently, Christ himself prefers to relate with his disciples as friend to friend rather than as master to servant. He tells them at the Last Supper: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends”.
While calling us to this new relationship of friendship, Jesus tells us that we all are fit to come to his level of relationship as friends. In this friendship the first choice is his as it is ours and he has found us worthy of this choice. He reminds us that we did not choose him but Jesus chose us first and he has decided to choose us in our unworthiness and to love and accept us as we are. These words of Christ, “you did not choose me, but I chose you”, apply to each one of us, we who believe in him, the Saviour of the world. Whether it is by our priesthood or by our baptism and our confirmation in Christ, each one of us was chosen by the Son of God to be an adoptive son of the Father in the Spirit.
The entire Gospel passage and the Second Reading speaks to us of God’s love for us and the First Reading tells us that God’s love has no partiality. One can describe love as something unique which reaches out to others without expecting anything in return. Such is the love of God for his creation. God’s loves is poured out in abundance on every single creature and it continues to flow out whether there is a response or not. This is the love which the father in the story of the Prodigal Son shows to the wayward son who has gone far away and wasted all his father’s gifts on a wasteful life. It may sometimes shock us that the love of God for the most generous. This is because God is love and by his very nature he cannot stop loving.
Let us be persons for others: Jesus demonstrated the love God, his Father, has for us by living for us and dying for us. Hence, as his disciples, we are to be persons for others, sacrificing our time, talents, and lives for others. This is what parents spontaneously do for their children by sacrificing themselves, their time, talents, health, and wealth for them. That is, they “spend” themselves for their children. The most effective way of communicating God’s love to others is by treating everyone as a friend, giving each the respect he or she deserves as a human being, God’s creation. In moments of trial and stress, when people are hostile or ungrateful and we feel the pull of bitter resentment in our hearts, it is important for us to remember that Christ’s own love was not limited to the people he liked.