GOSPEL REFLECTION, FRIDAY, 5TH WEEK OF EASTER, 8 MAY 2026

John 15:12-17.  Repeatedly in John’s gospel we hear Jesus speaking of his mutual indwelling with the Father – the Father is in me, as I am in the Father.  Even more, we hear Jesus saying that this is the nature of his relationship with us – I am in you, and you are in me, if you follow my teaching, my commands.  His commands to us are not like the demand of a master to a slave, for he calls us no more as slaves, but as friends.  His commands in this sense are the mutual relationship of friends because we do as he tells us, and he enables us by grace to do so.  This is the essence of what he says to his followers in this second section of his lengthy farewell to his disciples at the Last Supper.  It is, in effect, his farewell to the emerging Church, at least as a physical human being, the incarnation of the Father who lived amongst us.  After his Ascension, which we celebrate very soon, we are called upon to live deeply out of the teaching that he has left us as his friends.  That teaching is a moral teaching, but it is also a deeply rooted spiritual teaching, instructing us to be as he himself is with us.  We are his friends, he says, not his slaves.  In our friendship with him we experience something of his flow of love between him and the Father, a flow of mutual love and knowledge.  It is to experience something of the flow of love and knowledge between the persons of the Holy Trinity if we follow his instructions.  All of that is so despite our capacity for sin, that destructive alienation from himself and from the Father.  We are chosen by Jesus, as he says, “I chose you, you did not choose me” (v. 16).  We are chosen to love as he loves, as far as in us lies, by the work of God in us – not by quarreling, being in conflict, living in violence – but loving, doing right by others.  The love we are called to is a determined act of will to see that right is done to others, even our enemies, and those who hate us.  Jesus on the other hand gives us intimacy with God, so that he is no longer a distant stranger but our close friend, and we are called to be a sign of his love to the world, to be loving as he is loving.  We may not be able to do so on  our own, but we are able to do so according to his work in us by grace.