The Vine and the Branches
Jn 15:9-17
[Jesus said to his disciples,] 9“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
11“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. 12This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I
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. 16It 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. 17This I command you: love one another.”
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
True love is in mutually giving and forgiving. This is the kind of life
that Jesus wants to give us. He tells us that his love for us has its
origin in the love that his Father has for him. Love is the essence of
God. And Jesus takes this as a model of his love for us.
The
love of Jesus for us is both creative and transformative. Solomon
refers to the Son of God as the Incarnate Wisdom which “renews
everything while herself perduring; passing into holy souls from age to
age, she produces friends of God and prophets” (Wis 7:27). Jesus’ love
makes us able in turn to love with his love and thereby transforming us.
Pope Gregory the Great looks into this realization as a “passage from
being a friend (amicus) towards becoming a guardian of soul (animi custos)” (cf Michael Fallon, MSC, The Gospel according to John, p. 274).
“I have loved my friends,
as I do virtue, my soul, my God”
(Sir Thomas Browne).
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