Gospel: John 15:9-11

 

Today’s Gospel is formed of only three verses which continue from yesterday’s Gospel and give more light to be able to apply the comparison of the vine to the life of the community. The community is like a vine. 

 

Jesus remains in the love of the Father, by observing the commandments which He receives from Him. We remain in the love of Jesus by observing the commandments which He has left for us. And we should observe them in the same way in which He observed the commandments of the Father. It is in this union of the love of the Father and of Jesus that the source of true joy is found.

 

The ancient criterion was: “You will love your neighbor as yourself”. The new criterion is, “That you love one another, as I have loved you.” Here He utters the sentence which we sing even until now: “Nobody has greater love than this: to give one’s life for one’s friends!”

 

The practice of love up to the total gift of self! Immediately after, Jesus adds a very high ideal for the life of the disciples. Jesus had no more secrets for His disciples. He has told us everything He heard from the Father! This is the splendid ideal of life in community: to attain a total transparency, to the point of not having any secrets among ourselves and of being able to have total trust in one another, to be able to share the experience of God and of life that we have, and in this way enrich one another reciprocally. The first Christians succeeded in attaining this ideal during several years. They were “one only heart and one soul”.