VI SUNDAY OF EASTER (B)

Sunday, May 5, 2024
Jn 15:9-17

“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 may be in you and your joy may 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.”
(Jn 15:9-17)

In one of his final discourses recorded by the evangelist John, Jesus, in a context of intimacy with his disciples, conveys to them the heart of his teaching: the commandment of love. In chapter 13, we read how Jesus wraps a towel around himself and washes the feet of the apostles. This act was the prerogative of slaves! What does this action of the Master mean? He puts the other, the friend, at the center, with an attitude of love. And so, love has the ability to transform a gesture or a service that by nature seems like that of a slave, into a gesture of friendship. This is what, moreover, Jesus has always done in his life: he has placed each of us at the center of his heart and has given all of himself for us.

When a person lives in the love of the Lord, not only does he truly love, but he becomes a channel of love and is freed from the strongest slavery, that of selfishness. Selfishness chains us, keeping us closed in on ourselves and always putting our “self” at the center. The opposite of selfishness is friendship, which is the bond that creates the body of Christ. Do you want to be a friend? Love! Place the other – and first and foremost Jesus – at the center of your heart, to serve him with love. Those who love are never servants; those who love are FRIENDS!

Fr. Giuseppe