On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you.
For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.
We read the Word of God confidently and eagerly because we believe that God speaks to us through the Old and New Testaments. We know they were written by our ancestors, using the language, customs, and assumptions of their time. Very often we can see their confusion and misunderstandings of things we take for granted; but we do not doubt their wisdom or sincerity; nor do we doubt the Ineffable Word which spoke as clearly to them as it does to us. We hope that God guides us as well in our reading the texts as He guided the ancient writers.
There are times we can sense their struggle to convey the intensity and proximity of God's love, as in today's Gospel passage. One could argue persuasively that John the Evangelist stretches human language near to, and beyond, its limits, in his attempt to persuade and assure us of the Divine Indwelling. God's perichoresis (περιχώρησις) may be translated as the "inner life of the Holy Trinity" which is within us.
The 20th century Balthazar suggested that we imagine the Trinity not as standing apart from each other, but as a single harmony of three musical sounds. One might analyze the unified sound, and identify the three tones which create it, but the harmony itself is indivisible. They are in one "place," not in three different places; and each one is absolutely necessary to completeness, although each is complete in itself.
So does the harmonious Love of God sound in our human hearts as we are attuned to God's love. Doing penance, we purify our thoughts, words, attitudes, deeds, and habits so that we become a worthy vessel of that Divine Harmony. God's holiness should emanate from us so that others see, hear and sense it. Many are delighted even although some may despise it.
On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.
