FRIDAY of 5th WEEK of EASTER
’This is my commandment : love one anther as I have loved you.There is no greater love than this, to give your life for your friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you."
Jesus invites us to live from his Love and to have it flow forth from our lives, transforming into fraternal love: ’Love one another as I have loved you’. We have seen how much Jesus loves us and so we shall put into practice this unique Love. Jesus announces his Father as to a friend: the Father calls you, he wants you to become an apostle and sends you forth to bear fruit, a fruit that manifests itself through Love.Let us intensify our prayer so as to remain in God’s choice, the Holy Spirit.The Father will give us everything we ask of Him. he edifies us and continues his work in us :’Everything that you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you’ says Jesus. The desires God has put in the depths of our heart will be answered. This is how we penetrate into God’s Mystery : ’What I have learned from my father I shall make it known to you.’ What Jesus has had us known is the great Love with which we are loved.
’I shall no longer call you servants, because the servant does not know the master’s business; I call you friends for I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.’
To love Jesus is to give one’s life as spouses do, out of love, they give their life and take on the responsibility as parents. They accept the sacrifice of giving up their time in favour of their family : caring for, educating their children and protecting them as precious human beings.Missisonaries give also their life for the Gospel, with this same spirit of sacrifice. As do all disciples who commit themselves in love from the heart of the Father. If Jesus took on flesh of the Virgin Mary it so that we may become what we are, children of God.Jesus came to free us.He really is the Saviour, he went down into the deepest part of our darkness.In
Him we can recognise these darkest aprts of our being and be delivered from them. ’I am the vine, you are the branches’. There is a total unity between the vine and the branches. Jesus is saying that his Father is the vinedresser who is taking care of his vine, enveloping it with love. No one has a greater love than the one who, for his friends, discards his own life. Established in Jesus, forgetful of ourselves, as well as all our difficulties, we produce marvellous fruits. Drawing on the sap which is Christ, our life is transformed in a heart to heart with Jesus’ You are my friends if you do what I tell you’.
’You did not choose me, no I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that the Father will give you anything you ask in my name. My command to you is to love one another.’
Jesus invites us to lose our life to give it and to die to ourselves so that we can love our brothers with Christ’s Love, that one true Love. He will say, ’Father, not my will, but yours be done’ Our sanctification is contained in that of Jesus. He has placed un in the place we are so as to we can welcome God’s Mystery. What God wants is for us to leave ourselves so as to be freed of ourselves. ’I have chosen you so that you may go forth’ I do not call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I call you my friends, because I have had you known all I learned from the Father. If Jesus took on a human body, conceived in the Blessed Virgin Mary it is so as to unite divinity to humanity. Baptised in Christ, plunged in the death and resurrection we are one with Him.