6th Sunday of Easter (B)

(Edited) Reflections (from) 6th Sunday of Easter (B), May 11, 2009

First reading: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 98
Second reading: 1 John 4:7-10
Gospel reading: John 15:9-17

"Live on in My love."

This passage from the gospel of John teaches about God's word, action and His expression of love in the life and action of Jesus. God's word of love is not only in Christ's discourse in this passage from John, but also in the many signs He had performed all throughout the gospel. In His discourse, Christ makes all aware that we are in union with God's love if we live in His love - a love He lives in His love of the Father. This love of Christ makes everyone's joy complete. The measure by which everyone is to increase the quality of this love, is in the measure Christ exemplified by His whole life and mission: a great love of the Father and the Kingdom which all His followers are to continue until the end of the age. This quality of love bore much fruit in the Resurrection of Christ and will continue to bear fruit, and will endure, if all the baptized and the faithful continue to obey the command of Jesus: to love one another under the standard of His love.

Returning to the discourse in John 5:9-17.
The gospel of John has a distinctive difference with the other gospels. Whereas the other three gospels can be seen and viewed through common themes (Matthew and Luke borrow passages from Mark), John's gospel is structured and themed differently, and the text comes from a different scriptural tradition. The discourses in the gospel of John are more lofty, while the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), ground their writing in the humanity and person of Jesus. What however, brings all these gospel traditions together, and unites them into a common theme, is Christ's commandment of love. Mark, Matthew and Luke has Jesus saying: "Love the Lord God with all your mind, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as your self". Each gospel's tradition may distinguish each one from the other, but the message of love in their passages all say the same refrain: we are to love God with our whole being, and to love our neighbor as our self.

The reality of love that every human being grows up with is still found in traditional institutions that continue today in modern living: in the family, in school, in work and professional life, with religious communities or lay organizations, with people in one's neighborhood or in the parish, and with other cultures encountered in travels around the world. The love expressed in these situations, and in the specific relationships it is immersed in, is not perfect. It can cause dissensions, conflicts, misunderstanding, envy or jealousy, abandonment or separation. But Jesus teaches now in the discourse that for love to bear fruit it must live on in God; it must be of God. It is a love, as St. Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians, that is pure, patient, not jealous or proud, not ill-mannered or selfish, not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. And the truth God teaches us about love is this: to have Christ as the source and example by which everyone is to act in love and and in the holiness required of each one's state of life.