6th Sunday of Easter

Gospel Reading: John 15: 9-17

9 Jesus said to his disciples: 'As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love.

10 lfyou keep my commandments you will re­main in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.

11 l have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete:

12 This is my commandment: love one an­other, as I have loved you.

13 A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.

14 You are my friends, if you do what I com­mand you.

15 I shall not call you servants any more, because a servant does not know his master's business: I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.

16 You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last; and then the Father will give you any­thing you ask him in my name.

17 What I command you is to love one another.'

Gospel Meditation

Today's passage follows directly on last Sunday's. The metaphors, however, are not as dramatic. We must therefore make an effort to use our imagination in reading and eventually in interpreting them.

Verse 9 provides us with the key to the whole passage. We must therefore give it all our attention. The rest of the passage will then illustrate some aspect of it.

This passage tells us that we come to others with a love which we ourselves have experienced from others. This is telling us two important things.

• The first is that we love others from something we feel in ourselves. There are people outside ourselves whom we love. It isn't something we do because we have been ordered to do; we just feel it and then act accordingly.
• On the other hand, the love we feel for others has come from somewhere else. It was placed within us by those who loved us first. When we love therefore, we are re-enacting something we have inherited from others. It did not come only from us.

We need to spend some time meditating on these two facts.
Once we get them right, we will be able to decide how to pro-long our desire to love - the love we have within us and which we have to practise on the others we meet in the course of our lives.

The term 'love' is over-used, both in our sacred language and in our secular language. The love we speak about therefore tends to remain abstract. In interpreting a passage like this one then, we must link it to a personal memory. We have to remem­ber some act of love which touched us very deeply.

We remember something a person said to us or allowed to happen to us. They would be saying something like: I am suffer­ing this for you now and I am doing it so that you too can be of service to others when your turn comes.

When the person told us this, it made a very deep impression on us. Ever afterwards we would always return to it and remember what it meant to us. We know that we can now suffer for others because this other person suffered with us.

They were helping us to lift others and because of that, we now know what we must go through so that others will feel safe with us. We think of that as we bring up our children and all those whom the Lord has entrusted to our care.

Through this memory, we know that when we are deeply loved we do not have to be enslaved to those who loved us. We know we can trust them. It will naturally be someone who was or eventually became very important for us.

Perhaps one of our parents, an uncle or aunt, a brother or sister. It could also be someone who later became a deep friend. We remember too other people who loved us sincerely in our lives - a teacher, a friend, someone we met on our life journey.

We can also apply the passage to our relationship with the wider world. In all the great trouble spots of the world there are always people who spend a lot of their time working for peace between warring factions.

This has happened in areas like Palestine, Iraq, the Basque Countries. They don't make the news headlines but they are really there and as we read this passage we are with them within our hearts.

Jesus does a very interesting thing then. He says, 'As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.' This is telling us that we give ourselves to others in the same way that others have given themselves to us. This is very true, isn't it? Once we love others we find that we can share with them the truth of who we really are.

Verse 10 takes us a little further. It invites us to move in a new direction, as Jesus makes the connection between 'keeping commandments' and 'remaining in his love'. This is telling us something important about 'commandments'.

In this passage they do not refer to a series of obligations. They are rather a general commandment to accept what the other person is doing for us. Keeping his Father's commandments means simply that Jesus can remain calm within the awareness of his Father's love.

Verse 11 brings in the theme of joy. This is a new develop­ment again. All love produces joy. It is like an unnamed corol­lary of giving one's life to others. If our love doesn't produce joy, it can't be right. We have to add something to it which we may have neglected.

Verse 12 starts by repeating the connection that was made earlier, 'This is my commandment, love one another as I have loved you.' The Christian commandment to love is based on Jesus' love for us. We love not merely from ourselves but because the love of Christ has taken charge of us.

Verses 13-15. Jesus then goes on to make the connection be­tween love and the relationship between friends. He goes to the heart of what being a friend is all about. It means seeing another in the light of our experience.

'A servant does not know his master's business, but I have made known to you everything I learnt from my Father.' Let us spend some time with these imposing words. We take what we can from them and then let them take charge of us.

Verse 16a stays with friendship and goes back to the theme of bearing fruit which we saw last Sunday. It stresses first the choice of the person who wants to make us his friends — 'You did not choose me, no I chose you'.

This is so important. We often act as if we are the ones responsible for loving others. We do not really chose the person we decide to love. It is God who chooses us to reach out to them. We must be aware of this fact and re­spond accordingly.

Then Jesus gives an important lesson. 'I commissioned you' means first that he has sent us out and that we are to go out and bring forth results. The results are simply 'to bear fruit', to show the world what our love has accomplished. Then he adds another important corollary, 'the kind of fruit that I know will last'. It must not be a fruit that no one can understand or accept. It must be the kind that we know will last.

Verse 16b. Then Jesus makes a very important point. 'The Father will give you anything you ask him in my name.' The Father in heaven will therefore give honour to all those who bear the name of Jesus, written in their hearts.

Prayer

'Spiritual poverty clings to nothing and nothing clings to it.'
Meister Eckhart

Lord, forgive us for being so busy when we come into your presence.
We have to tell you all our needs in case you might forget some of them.
We make many resolutions in case you don't think well of us.
We are anxious to get some teaching from you that will keep us faithful to your will.
We thank you for the times when you invited us just to be quiet and remain in your love, your permanent unconditional love, the kind you had from your Father.
Lord, we have made the commandments into cold, objective obligations and many of them, at that.
We thank you that they are gestures of love

• the tender embrace between husband and wife before leav­ing for work,
• the words of wisdom that a great leader speaks to his inti­mate followers on his deathbed,
• the wave of friends at the airport.

They are all gestures that we treasure because they tell us that we are loved and set us free to give ourselves to others.
Lord, when we look at our lives we discover a history of love.
We were loved when we were small, as Jesus was loved by Joseph and Mary.
And that love freed us; it was a starring point from which we could trust others and give ourselves to them.
And now our children, those whom we have loved in our turn, have grown up and become loving people too.
Lord, that history of love is your presence in the world.

'Be as uninteresting as a glass of cold, clear uninteresting water.'
Aidan Kavanagh

Lord, we thank you for our friends.
We remember when we knew them first.
We admired them so much that we just wanted to please them, not really to understand them - just like servants.
Then gradually we became friends, as we learnt to trust each other, to let ourselves be known so that we could share what was most intimate to us,
the kind of things only you taught us, and there was no such thing as 'this is my business'.
The interesting thing is that we have come close to you too.

'Baby, will you remember me when you wake on Ash Wednesday
morning? You know how Ash Wednesday is always a different story.'
David Rudder

Lord, the ideal for great people today seems to be that they give orders and demand obedience.
We have those who know and then the rest who know nothing.
We thank you for Jesus and those who follow his style, who look on their followers as friends and make known to them their dreams for themselves
and for the world.
Only they can bring about true community.
Lord, we thank you for the joy of married love, when you don't have to prove yourself or try to be different but can just relax in someone's love.
Truly that is a joy that is complete.

'Be men and women of the world but not worldly men and women.'
Jose Maria Escriva

Lord, we sometimes act as if our plans for society are our own and we must destroy all who oppose us.
But the hopes we have for the church, for our country, for the world, are your gift to us, the passion we feel is your doing.
We are your servants sent to carry out your commission, and our achievements are the fruit you cause to emerge.
So even if we die before we achieve what we set out to do, and even if our successes are short-lived, the fruit we bear will endure because they come from you.

'If you love God, the pain does not go away, but you live more fully.'
Michael Hollings

Lord, we thank you for those precious moments when we know that your command to love, though very simple, was all that we needed.
It summed up the law of life, the secret of peace and prosperity, and the only hope for the world.