Sixth Sunday of Easter
Love: architrave of the universe
As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. 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 that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another. Jn 15,9-17
“As the Father has loves me, so I also have love you. Remain in my love”. This first verse of today’s page urged us to take in the dynamics of God’s love, which is the engine and the architrave of the universe: love between the Father and Jesus the Son, and love between them and the mankind and love of the human being for one another. This love also extends to things: the same law of universal gravitation, for which all the things which exist in the universe attract one another and move in harmony, is nothing but the manifestation of God’s love. The second verse announces that the secret to enter the circuit of universal love is the observance of the commandments, which is nothing more than loyalty in pursuing the project for which men and things have been created. The third verse tells us that remaining in love and continuing the realization of God’s plan is the secret of joy: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete”. There is a direct connection between love and joy: there is no joy without love, no love without joy.What is the same evangelization, to which we are called, if not the manifestation of the joy and love for God and for men? A sad Christian is a bad Christian. Love, however, is not only the engine of the universe and the reason for joy: it is also the essential atmosphere for growing and becoming accomplished men and women, pursuing God’s plan. We were born to live in love as the fish was born to live in the water: if we do not live in love we become something else, much worse. “Many are mean because they were not sufficiently loved” Don Bosco used to say.Within a family, the children grow up harmoniously in joy if they remain in their parents’ love which, to be perfect, must be rooted in Jesus Christ’s love: “Remain in my love”. So, the family meditation on the Sacred Scripture, which constitute the story of God’s love for men, becomes necessary.
As a tree grows and bears fruit if it is well rooted in the soil and exposed to the heat of the sun, so the children grow well if they are fed by the word of God and their parents’ love. And they will bear fruit when due.