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06 mag 2018
06/05/2018 6th Sunday of Easter - B

06/05/2018 6th Sunday of Easter - B

 Reading 1, Acts 10,25-27.34-35.44-48 * Psalm 97 * Reading 2, First John 4,7-10 * Gospel, John 15,9-17

 

Jesus carries on the same topic he started last Sunday: “Remain in me”, he said. Now he continues: “Remain in my love”. He then explains us what love for Him looks like, and what is the fruit that it bears and, above all, how He came to love us.

How can I know if I love Jesus? It is very simple: if I follow His commandments I love Him! The first step towards love, in fact, is listening. When I love a person, I pay attention to what they say to me, I remember their words for a long time, I try to follow them if they express a desire that I can fulfill. Jesus Himself once said: “Anyone who loves me will keep my word”.

He gave as an example: He loved the Father by fulfilling His will with obedience till death. In offering His life for us, then, He gave to us the greatest love, the one you feel only towards the dearest friends. In this way He wants to be loved.

You are my friends, if you do what I command you”. We know what it is, what He commands us. The entire Gospel is sparkling with wise indications, brave, new, and all of them can be summarized in only one word: love. Love, that is the most intimate essence of God, is the constant example given us by Jesus.

Saint John too, in the second reading, lingers on the same word in order to let us glimpse at the mystery. God’s love is not hidden any more, we cannot picture it any more with our imagination, not even define it through our reasoning, because God has already shown and given it to us: it is His only begotten Son come in the world. Through Him we received “life”.

Now this life let us also love, demonstrating how we come from God, that we are also taking part in His divinity. Obviously, we are taking part in that divinity that is love, not in a divinity to be taken as leadership, power, supremacy or anything else down the line. It is a pity that men, thinking about God, are inclined to automatically think of Him as a ruler, because they themselves would like to be in charge and rule. In order to get to know the true face of God, His true nature, His being love, it is necessary an intervention coming from outside, it is necessary an announce, the preaching. In fact, Jesus sent His own into the world in order to tell about His death and resurrection, and therefore, through these mysteries, to make God known as love.

Today’s first reading tells us about Peter’s very first missionary encounter. He enters the house of a Pagan, who desired to get to know the true God, in order to introduce Him to Jesus’ character, the mystery of His death and resurrection. The pagan Cornelius and “all the listeners”, that were listening in his house, full of faith, received the Holy Spirit and, then, the baptism. They, even if loving God and praying, did not know Him until Peter announced them Jesus and taught them about His life, His teachings, and the mystery of His death and resurrection. Even if they were loving God they did not have the light of the Spirit, they did not have «the life», they did not know the fullness of joy.

The true and full joy for men, as a matter of fact, it is coming from knowing and loving Jesus. He Himself says so, right there in today’s Gospel. He has revealed Himself and has asked His disciples to love Him by following His words, not because of selfish reasons, but because they themselves would get “His joy”, “unbounded joy”.

Not all Christians know this joy. Those who never made a personal decision to meet and love God, those who satisfied themselves with a faith lived as a tradition, for convention, without getting deeper into its meaning, these cannot know Jesus’ joy. Those, instead, that, being at risk to be mocked by the world and their friends, or even being at risk to suffer economic losses and loss of social consideration, have been getting closer to Jesus’ person and have taken His word seriously, living it, these know life and perfect joy!

 

Lord Jesus, thank you for your love for us and for all of the love for you you will put in us today.