GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 4TH WEEK OF EASTER, 14 MAY 2025

John 15:9-17.  Our gospel reading comes from about the middle of Jesus’ farewell to his disciples at the Last Supper.  The Agony in  the Garden and the Crucifixion are about to occur, although the disciples may not have realised how imminent they were.  There is an urgency to Jesus’ farewell in which he urgently tries to deepen their faith and knowledge that they were intimately bound to the Father and the Holy Spirit, sharing in the divine life.  The divine life is the flow of utter love and attention between the persons of the Trinity.  We are invited by grace to share in that flow of love in a way that is appropriate to our humanity.  These are heady words, not only what I have tried to say, but in the words of the gospel itself.  We must pause frequently to reflect upon all that this means for our Christian life.   The flow of love and attention between the Son and the Father are Jesus’ prayer and the Father’s loving response.  In the end there is only one prayer, and that is the prayer of Jesus himself.  Our prayer must be an entry into that prayer by listening intently to that prayer and the gift of grace to us by which we can know it and enter into it.  Any gift of grace requires that we respond lovingly to it.  We do that in prayer and obedience; in Latin the root word of “obedience” means “to listen.”  In listening we must then do the will of the Father shown to us in the Son and then act upon it.  That action must be a reflection, a demonstration, a showing clearly what love is.  The latter part of today’s reading tells us in Jesus’ own words what love is: “love one another as I have loved you” (v. 12ff.).  And remember this:  “I no longer call you servants, but friends because I have made known to you all that I have heard from my Father.  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit….” (vv. 15-16).  May we bind those words to our hearts, day by day for ever.