The Love of God

"Whoever loves me will be loved by my father

 and I will love him and manifest myself to him."

The disciples are reassured by Jesus who opens His heart to them, calling them; friends; and not servants bestowing upon them the Eucharist as an inheritance and opening up a new path, that of love given to the world through the Cross, the concrete revelation of God who loves to the point of total self-giving, a sign of His limitless presence in the world.

On the Cross, Christ does not fail but brings to fullness the manifestation of His immense love: Greater love has no man than this, to die for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. Only the disciple who accepts the reality of Jesus’s death can open himself to a new relationship with the Crucified-Risen One: true following; begins with Easter.

The Cross is the beginning of a new journey, of an indestructible relationship with Jesus Christ: with his death and resurrection, He opens the Way that leads to the Truth of the experience of God, which is full; Life.

That evening of the first Holy Thursday, the fearful Apostles are consoled by Christ, who tells them: I will not leave you orphans. That evening Jesus seems not so much concerned for himself as for his friends, whom he knows would know the depth of their weakness, the great pain of abandonment, and He search for something to comfort them. Jesus repeats to us even today: I will not leave you orphans.

These words were, are, and always will be a certainty for those who follow him, yesterday, today, and forever; and he spoke them at the most difficult moment of his existence among us. The risen Christ tells us once again that He who loves is the dwelling place of the beloved: He carries him in his heart, as his life.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. It is not an injunction (you must keep them) but a revelation of goodness: “if” you love, you will enter a new world. It all begins with the conjunction “if,” a little word full of delicacy and respect: if you love me… “If”: a starting point so humble, so free, so trusting that it helps us understand that keeping Christ’s commandments is not obeying an external law, but living like Him in love. Just as the Just as the first apostles of Christ and the Gospel were moved by love lived as law, we too, moved by the love of Christ, are moved to continue the task of bringing the love of God made flesh into the world.

If we love Christ, 

He inhabits our thoughts, actions, and words and changes them.

By doing so, we live His good, beautiful, and happy life. 

If we love Jesus and observe His commandment of love, 

not only do we not hurt, betray, steal, lie, or kill, 

but we also help, welcome, and bless.

Easter Sunday VI, A