Gospel: Jn 15:9-17
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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. This is my commandment: Love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: Love one another.”
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Doing the will of the Father is the raison d’être of Jesus’ mission – the purpose of his coming to save the world. As John sums it up, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
The love proposed here is not passionate love (eros), nor familial love (storge), nor friendship love (philia), but selfless love (agape) or charity (caritas). It borders on the heroic martyrdom that offers one’s life for the sake of the beloved. Christ is emphatic in saying, “Love one another as I have loved you.” This entails “self-emulation,” so that in the process the “sacrificial offering,” the bond of covenant relationship, unites the two to each other.
By love, the Father is united to Jesus; by that same love, Jesus is united to all Christian believers. As one hymn summarizes it, “Love it was that made us, and it was love that saved us. Love was God’s plan, when he made man. God’s divine nature is love.”
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SOURCE: “365 Days with the Lord 2020,” ST. PAULS Philippines, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 895-9701; Fax 895-7328; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.
