Word to the Wise
Friday, May 20, 2022 - 5th Week of Easter - Fri
[Acts 15:22-31 and John 15:12-17]"This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit what will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another." [John]
I have printed out the entire gospel passage for today from Jesus' Last Supper discourse in the Gospel According to John because it contains the fundamental basis of all discipleship. Our relationship to Jesus cannot be separated from our relationship to our neighbor. As Pope Francis points out in his first "encyclical" EVANGELII GAUDIUM (The Joy of the Gospel), we are all called to be "missionary disciples." Jesus makes it clear that he considers us to be "friends," but we must follow his commands. We are to love one another as Jesus loves us!!! This includes not only those with whom we personally interact, but also people whom we will never meet but whose lives are impacted by the way we vote or pay our taxes!!! We cannot "compartmentalize" our faith from our social and political actions. The racial hatred that has been demonstrated by shootings in El Paso at a Walmart or in Buffalo at a grocery store or a church in South Carolina are horribly graphic examples that should lead us to examination of conscience for any attitudes incompatible with Jesus' command to love one another. Our neighbor may be in the womb, in a cell on death row or on our southern border. He or she may be next door or living in our own house and kin to us.
Jesus challenges us to "bear fruit that will remain." His words in last Sunday's gospel scripture are a challenge: "This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." How "fruitful" are we? AMEN