The Arc of Love

Gospel: John 15: 9-17

Throughout the Gospels there is an ever increasing invitation to love.  We are first invited to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, placing our neighbor's needs equal to our own.  Next, we are then urged to add the love of enemies, adding them to the category of neighbor that was unheard of in those times.  But then, Jesus identifies himself with our neighbor, telling us that whatever we do to another we do to him.  Finally in today's reading we are invited to be Christ himself, loving others as he loved us.  

This entire moral arc of love is fully expressed in the parable of the Good Samaritan which begins as an answer to the question who is my neighbor.  The first two movements of love are immediately addressed - loving neighbor and enemy.  But then if we look at the story anagogically and see Christ as the Good Samaritan we then see how Jesus has loved us.  We now have concrete example on how to do so in our lives.  In many ways this parable is the entire Gospel itself in one simple story.

If we are looking for a way to ascend with the Lord to the heavens, we have the entire program of love to which he calls and invites us to participate in ever deeper ways throughout our lives.  Each step of love is ever more challenging on the level of human nature, but each is designed to elevate us beyond our nature to be more divine.  The path of love is the path of divinization and illumination within us.  It is the way in which we ascend to heaven ourselves.

Access for All

Gospel: John 16: 12-15

When it comes to this mysterious figure of the Holy Spirit, we have acquired some unhealthy ideas over the years.  We have come to believe that only a small select group of men have access to the Spirit at all time and that every decision they make is guided by the Spirit.  In our own life our access to the Spirit is limited to sacramental moments at baptism and confirmation.  At all other times the Holy Spirit is a nice conversation piece in our theological attic.

But Jesus tells us that we have access to the Spirit at all times, and that the Spirit will guide each one of us in the way of all truth, not merely in some institutional sense but in our individual, personal lives.  The Spirit dwells within each person as we are told that we are temples of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit, then, cannot be contained by institutional machinations.  The Spirit is present to each of our lives, there to guide us in all truth as well.

Each day we look to the Spirit for guidance in the truth, in making judgments we need to make in our lives.  We look to the Spirit to inspire us to do the works of mercy and loving kindness as Jesus did while on earth.  And we look to the Spirit for consolation when the struggles and difficulties of life become overwhelming at times.  We have received a great gift.  Let us not consign her to our attic of oddities, but instead cultivate a mind that listens to her wisdom each and everyday.  

The Consolation

Gospel: John 16: 5-11

The disciples are overcome with grief.  Jesus has been unjustly executed, and they have some guilt regarding this death.  One of their band betrayed him, another denied him three times, and the rest abandoned him to this cruel fate.  The trauma of all these events magnifies the grief they feel, all of which are perfectly natural and understandable responses to trauma and death that human beings experience each and every day.  

However, Jesus promises to send them the Consoler, the Holy Spirit who will help them overcome this grief.  Over time they will come to see and realize many things.  Jesus is physically absent from them, but his Spirit moves among them, enabling them to carry out the works of mercy and loving kindness he performed while on earth.  Eventually, their sorrow will turn into joy, knowing that Jesus lives among us in word, sacrament, and the presence of others.  

In our own grief we experience with the loss of loved ones we too can find consolation in the Spirit and in the ongoing presence of Jesus in the world.  Grief can seem like a slab of concrete that crushes us.  But like a little tiny tree shoot in the crack of the concrete, over time it grows above the concrete and breaks that concrete to be a strong tree.  The concrete, the grief, will always be there, but it no longer dominates our life.  This is what the Spirit enables us to do with the consolation she brings to our lives.