The Vine and the Branches

Today's Reflections

      

The Vine and the Branches 

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Jn 15:9-11

[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.”

Remain in my love. Love is the essence of God. Jesus teaches this to his disciples. Now he wants to guide them out of the complexities characterizing the teachings and practices of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus gives them a new commandment and says that the love he has for them has its origin in the love that the Father has for him. He invites them to remain in his love. To be separated from his love is to be fruitless. This love is unconditional, self-emptying, and enduring all trials and difficulties for the sake of giving life and joy to the beloved.

Our love for God and for one another must resemble Christ’s own and must be expressed to fulfill God’s commandments that Jesus has summarized into two simple, but equally important, commands: we are to love God with all our mind, strength, and heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Keeping the commandments of Jesus turns us inside out, relating to God and to one another from our hearts, from the core of our being.

“It isn’t true that Christianity has been tried

and found wanting. It has been found out

to be difficult, and so it has really never been tried”

(G. K. Chesterton).