5th Sunday of Easter, year ’C’ 24th April 2016
"Jesus said, ’Now the Son of man has been glorified, and in him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in him, God will in turn glorify him in himself.’
Ac.14,21b-27 Ps.144 Ap.21,1-5a Jn.13,31-33a.34-35
“When he had gone, Jesus said ’Now the Son of man has been glorified, and in him God has been glorified.If God has been glorified in him, God in turn will glorify him in Himself.”
This small phrase :’As I have loved you, love one another’ is at the heart of the Gospel.
We call to mind the hardness of the Pharisees and scribes who want to draw Jesus into a trap with all their questions. Jesus is sold by Judas to the high priest!
’Now, said Jesus, ’the Son of man is glorified.’ We might have thought it were the contrary! Now, Jesus takes up the challenge of Love that has Conquered. We are in sorrow when adversity is there and when we are in aguish , disturbed. We have a hard time saying : ’Now, the Son of man is glorified in me.’
The distress and misery of humanity is taken up in the mystery of Jesus who saves us. Our heart can already burn with love in truth, but we are still in darkness and this is a cold place to be in. Our inner world can be cold and stormy, we feel charity has become cold, no longer existing. Yet the infinite Love of God is at work on the deepest level of our being.
“My little children, I shall be with you only a little longer…You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, where I am going, you cannot come.I tell this to you also now.”
Jesus asks us to dwell in his Love.He asks us to love as He does, when we don’t understand the evil that comes down upon us. The place we give to the other in our life and in our heart will not change because of any trials. Christ has shown us the way of fraternal love that rests upon truth, gift, forgiveness.
Truth. Jesus gave all he had and was, all he received from His Father.When going through trials, we get down on our knees and tell Jesus how much we are in need of Him, and so He takes the first place in us. It is not in those times
when everything is going well that we pray the most, for it is during hard times that we lean mostly on prayer again, in faith.
’The Son of man is glorified.’ God’s Infinite Love invades his heart eternally. Even if on the outside it is freezing cold, where there is the greatest anger and strongest hatred, the betrayal of love, God triumphs nevertheless.
If Jesus’ Love triumphed over evil on Golgotha, it is so that He may once more triumph when we ourselves are going through ordeals of all sorts!
At the time of Judah going out to betray Jesus,(who will undergo the most radical attack he ever had to confront-hell-)Jesus will say ’The Son of man is glorified.’ It is in the full sun of Love where humanity is for ever victorious.
“I give you a new commandment : love one another; you must love one another as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another that everyone will recognise you as my disciples.”
Jesus gave us his own life so we should live from Him. Following Him, we wish to give the best of ourselves, without reserve nor calculation. We also accept the gifts given to us, as Jesus accepted from Mary the gift of her life in this world. We accept everything from another, even our worst enemies can bring us something like a gift from God.
Beyond the wound that is done in us, we live in God so as to live as brothers. Following Christ, in the image of what he lived, we ask for the courage of fraternal love, the courage of truth, the courage of the gift, the courage of forgiveness. In order to fully live in his Love, in Him, we remain in faith. This is humanly impossible, but Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit for this commandment of Love.
’What will show to people you are my disciples is the love you have one for another.’
Accepting the state of weakness in which we are, we join Jesus’ lowliness. In this annihilation, Jesus warms up the earth again and has creation blossom again. ’Here is man’s dwelling place.’
We ask for the grace to welcome weakness, humiliation and adversity in the Holy Spirit, in the One who helps us to love come what may.