Jesus’ Last Supper discourse, John 13-17, is almost unbearably intense. More than a summation of his teaching, it carries all the weight of a final will and testament. Like the last words of Jacob, David, and Saint Paul, it is filled with hope and confidence and deep affection.
In today’s brief passage, Jesus commands us to love one another because he loves us so intensely. Any parent of more than one child will understand his heart-ache; she wants her children to love one another as she loves them. She wants her love to live in them; their devotion to one another will be, in a sense, her own eternal life. Should they fail to love one another, both her love and her memory might fade and vanish like the smoke from a snuffed candle.
Love in memory of Jesus – that love that binds us together – is ready to lay down its life for another. Initially that may sound like too much, a pious exaggeration, but saints and martyrs have demonstrated how realistic Jesus’ command is. As recently as 1941 Saint Maximillian Kolbe, a prisoner in a Nazi Death Camp, volunteered to die in place of a husband and father who pleaded for mercy. The German commandant was so astonished that he permitted this Christian act to proceed even in his institution of unprecedented evil.
Saint Maximillian liked to call himself a slave of Mary the Immaculate Conception, and his impulsive generosity certainly reflected her fiat; but Jesus preferred the word friend. “I have called you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” Open to the Holy Spirit the Christian overlooks the foolishness of one’s loved ones, to forgive their foibles seventy times seven times, to give both jacket and shirt when only a jacket was asked, and to walk the extra mile.
The Martyr's act demonstrates the truth of his teaching: "With the Holy Spirit the impossible becomes easy; without the Holy Spirit even the easy is impossible."
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I love to write. This blog helps me to meditate on the Word of God, and I hope to make some contribution to our contemplations of God's Mighty Works.
Ordinarily, I write these reflections two or three weeks in advance of their publication. I do not intend to comment on current events.
I understand many people prefer gender-neutral references to "God." I don't disagree with them but find that language impersonal, unappealing and tasteless. When I refer to "God" I think of the One whom Jesus called "Abba" and "Father", and I would not attempt to improve on Jesus' language.
You're welcome to add a thought or raise a question.