As the Father Loves Me, so Also I Love You

Homily for Thursday In the Fifth Week of Easter

Verse nine of chapter fifteen from St. John’s Gospel reads, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” The Father’s love for Jesus and Jesus’s love for the Father are not a past event but a permanent, steady state into which Jesus invites his disciples to enter and abide, staying connected to that love as a branch stays connected to the vine.

Jesus says he loves the disciples just as the Father loves him. The Father loves Jesus by showing him all that the Father is doing, and Jesus loves his disciples in the same way. Jesus lets his disciples know that God’s love for the Son encompasses the Father’s command to the Son to lay down his life for the world. This is, for the evangelist, the most important thing that God is doing. It is the highest and deepest expression of the love of the Son for the Father and the love of God the Father and the Son for the world.

Jesus’s love for God is expressed in concrete acts of obedience in time and space. Just as Jesus keeps the Father’s commandments and abides in the Father’s love, so Jesus’s disciples are to keep his commandments and abide in Jesus’s love.

The great commandment that Jesus gave us is that we are to “Love one another.” But before moving from the vertical love that enables believers to live in union with the Father and the Son to the horizontal love that enables believers to live in community with one another, Jesus inserts a word about joy, which characterizes both dimensions of love.

For Jesus, the love commandment is no burden; it is a formula for deep and abiding joy. To live in love for God and for one another is to share in the joy of doing God’s will. John the Baptist testified to the joy of recognizing Jesus and standing in his presence. Jesus tells God that he wants his own joy to be made complete in his disciples.

The Eucharist is our daily reminder of this commandment. As we receive the love of Jesus in the sacramental presence in the consecrated bread and wine, we receive tangible evidence of the love of God for each of us. With the reception of the Eucharist comes the responsibility to share that love with each other.