Through today’s Gospel we can see our way to the Father. Jesus sets out a road beginning and ending with love.
Firstly, and ultimately, there is love. Jesus, the human manifestation of love, explains that if we truly love him, we will also keep his commandments.
Blossoming into our life comes a new advocate sent by the Father: the Holy Spirit. He shall be with us forever. Christ speaks of “…the Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive”. But we know him because we know Christ. Our knowledge of Christ, our desire to know him, to make him part of our life, to let him in, to do his will: all of this brings us the Spirit of truth.
We shall not be left orphans. Christ refers to the Fathership of God, intimating that he is one with that Father. We shall not be stranded from our creator. We are designed with love and compassion, and we are destined to reunite with our creator.
In a short time, Jesus says, the world will not see him. But we, who practice the love of Christ, who make him our soul desire, we’ll see him again. This is because we live in him and he in us. Love Incarnate lives within us. We are seized with the Spirit of God.
Love, then, is the constant on our road to God. Love keeps us moving on and moving closer. If we ever worry that we are not loving God, we can first of all remember that he loves us, and that he did so first. And if we want to find our way to him, there is one thing we must do. And that is to love.
Be under absolutely no illusion: Jesus does not mean that we must simply love those who already love us. Love is not a club. It doesn’t have walls. Christ is asking us to do what we often think is almost impossible. We must love those who do not love us, just as he does. He gave us an example in his ministry culminating on his death on the Cross.
It is by no means unusual to begin this journey every day. As the old saying goes: tomorrow I will begin again. And so we pray that we may be more faithful to the love Jesus has shown us and give ourselves completely to him, by loving where we do not want to love, and consenting to be taken by his hand into the difficult places in our life. Let us use his example as our means to attaining the Kingdom of heaven.
A reading from the Gospel according to John (14:15-21)
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘If you love me you will keep my commandments.
I shall ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you for ever,
that Spirit of truth
whom the world can never receive
since it neither sees nor knows him;
but you know him,
because he is with you, he is in you.
I will not leave you orphans;
I will come back to you.
In a short time the world will no longer see me;
but you will see me,
because I live and you will live.
On that day you will understand
that I am in my Father
and you in me and I in you.
Anybody who receives my commandments
and keeps them will be one who loves me;
and anybody who loves me
will be loved by my Father,
and I shall love him and show myself to him.’
The Gospel of the Lord.