Jn 14:7-14
I have loved you just as the Father has loved me. 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 own joy may be in you and your joy be complete. This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you. No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I shall no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know the master’s business; I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father. You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that the Father will give you anything you ask him in my name. My command to you is to love one another.
If we look deep into the heart of Jesus, we discover there a burning love for God the Father. Perhaps we are too little aware that the Lord wants to glorify the Father and make us acquainted with him as God really is.
It is naturally closer to us that we contemplate Jesus’ love for us and penetrate the mysteries of salvation. This is also very good, and we are always invited to do this and to deepen it more and more.
But the Lord wants to take us into his great love for the Father, that we may live completely in it and be at home in it.
Perhaps an analogy can help us to understand this even better.
Let us think of a married couple who love each other and are given a child by the Lord after a long wait. The love of the parents now embraces the child and the child lives from it.
It will then discover that the parents not only turn their love towards it, the child, but also love each other. Now the child is also at home in this love and rejoices in the mutual affection of the parents. It is not only not excluded, but completely included in it and loves this love!
So it is with Jesus’ love for his Father into which he calls us. To become aware of it is a great inner rapture, for what can be more beautiful than the love of the Most Holy Trinity, which exists between the three divine Persons! All are included in this love, for this love has brought them forth, redeems them, and will complete them when it is answered.
Philip has yet to understand that in Jesus he meets the Father. He has not yet recognised it, and Jesus explains it to him and thus to all those who come later. All the works that the Lord does, the Father does. They are one. That is why we also see the Father in Jesus.
Let us try today not to ask, as Philip did, that Jesus might show us the Father! We know this by faith, we just have to recognise everything better.
But we can ask Jesus to reveal his love for the Father to us more, to take us as his children and disciples fully into this mystery, so that we may live in it and from it.
It is important that we realise our faith not only in the active dimension, as important as the works of faith are.
We are invited to grasp in contemplation the core of faith, the reason for all that we see and believe: the love of God. And there is first of all the love of the Most Holy Trinity in itself.
Let no one think that to encounter the love of God in oneself is worth less than concrete service. Let us think of Mary as she sat at the feet of Jesus and he emphasised her contemplative attitude!
No, it is different: the more I encounter the love of God, the more my heart is inflamed, the more easily my works take on a supernatural character, because they flow directly from the love of God! The right contemplation of God’s love leads to love in itself and to the work that flows from it!
In eternity we will be able to behold God and enjoy Him without restrictions. He himself will be our joy, together with all who love him!
Here on earth we are already invited to share in the joy of eternity. Let us ask the Lord to know His love for the Father more and also to love the Father as He loves Him!
Let us therefore not miss prayer, time with him, even being alone with him! We never lose time if we pray in the right way, but we lose a lot of time if instead of prayer we do things that do not have the same importance!
Let us ask our Lord about His love for the Father, and let us ask Him not only to understand it better, but also – as far as this is possible on earth – to be able to enjoy it already now and to be at home in it!