Fifth Thursday of Easter

From the Word of the Day

 As the Father loves me, so I also love you.

                                                      John 15: 10

 How should we live this Word

 With these words, Jesus reveals God’s total love for humanity.  We already have proof of Jesus’ intense, radical, and total love for us.  He loved us to the consummation of love, allowing Himself to be nailed to the cross and to die on it.  Jesus dies, burdening Himself with the sins of the world.  He was embraced by the Father at the moment of His death and on the third day, He rose from the dead.  This is the expression of the Trinity’s intense, radical, and total love for us.  Jesus invites us to open ourselves to this love, to embrace it and thus remain in the love of Jesus, within the love of the Divine Trinity.

 The way to enter into this creative and purifying love is to observe the commandments.  Jesus summarized them in two precepts:  love God and love your neighbor.  The Gospels furnish us with many concrete examples of these precepts in the words and works of Jesus.  It is a great support for our life when we draw upon the Word of God each day and find there encouragement and comfort for ourselves and for others.

 Today as I pause for silent contemplation, I will meditate on the concluding words of today’s Gospel.  “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”  Jesus’ joy consists in the full gift of self to the Father, loving Him, and doing His will.  In my littleness, I give myself totally to the Father when I knowingly seek to follow Jesus’ footsteps, to clothe myself in His desires, attitudes, sentiments, trying to love as He loves.

 Lord Jesus, you call me to greatness!  I know I am not worthy but this is no problem for You.  I love You.  Grant me the power of Your love to overcome my fragility and enter into endless joy in the bosom of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen!

 The voice of St. Augustine, Church Doctor

 God offers Himself to us completely.  He says to us, ‘Love me and you will have Me because you could not love Me if you did not already possess Me.