John 15:9-17

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48

Palm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4

1 John 4:7-10

John 15:9-17

Jesus said to his disciples:

“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 might 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.”

Opening Prayer: Lord God, your plan of salvation is eternal. You sent your Son in the fullness of time to save us from eternal death and redeem us from the debt of sin. He gathered the remnant of Israel and sent them out into the whole world. Send me out to gather my family, friends, and coworkers into your divine family.

Encountering the Word of God

1. Love One Another: At the Last Supper, Jesus revealed the great mystery of the Holy Trinity. God is Father, Son, and Spirit. God is revealed by Jesus as a communion of love. The Father eternally loves the Son and the Son eternally loves the Father. Their mutual eternal love “spirates” (breathes forth) the Third Person of the Trinity – God the Holy Spirit. This eternal Triune communion of Love offers us a share in their divine love. This is the whole purpose of creation. And when human beings sinned and broke the bond of love with God, the Father sent the Son to the world: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). Love, we see, is much more than a passive feeling, it is an action. Whether or not I love someone shouldn’t be based on how the other person makes me feel. Love is about how people can give themselves to one another for each other’s true good. It is about how I can give of myself and sacrifice myself for another person and their good. God’s love is not selfish or self-centered but self-giving. God the Father doesn’t hold back when he sees his children in need. He seeks their true good and sends his Son to save them and reestablish them in divine friendship. God is not a master who seeks to benefit from his servants, but a Father who wants to see his children flourish and enjoy his divine life and love.

2. Gathering the Nations into the Friendship of Divine Love: The First Reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, narrates how the saving love of God was extended to the Gentiles. Peter, we are told, began to understand the meaning of the vision he had that commanded him to eat unclean food three times. Following the urging of the Holy Spirit, Peter entered the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. Just as he must no longer consider the foods prohibited by Deuteronomy 14 to be unclean, Peter must no longer consider the Gentiles to be unclean. The protective walls of Deuteronomy that separated Israel culturally and ritually from the influence of the Gentile nations were being torn down. Peter announced to Cornelius and his whole household that the New Covenant is universal: anyone who fears the Lord and does what is right is acceptable to God and can be welcomed into God’s covenant family. Jews and Gentiles are both called to believe in Jesus and receive the forgiveness of their sins. Peter notes that all the prophets bore witness to Jesus’ ministry as the anointed one (Acts 10:43). And the prophets often depicted the future salvation happening in two phases: “First a remnant of Israel would be restored, and then the restored Israel would draw men from all nations into herself (cf. Isaiah 2:2-4; 49:5-6; Zechariah 8:23; 14:8-9)” (Pimentel, Witnesses of the Messiah, 102). During his public ministry, Jesus was concerned with the first phase. He gathered a remnant and restored the twelve tribes in the twelve apostles. After his resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, Jesus sent out his twelve apostles, the symbol of the restored Israel, to carry out the second phase. 

3. The Purifying Work of the Spirit: The forty years between Jesus’ death and the destruction of Jerusalem was a special time of testing and brought the old covenant of Deuteronomy to its conclusion and fulfillment in the New Covenant. The Holy Spirit was poured out and made clean what was unclean and made possible the incorporation of the Gentiles into the restored Israel. “The presence and action of the Holy Spirit therefore abolishes the Pharisaic program of separation from the Gentile world. Although the Pharisees knew the prophecies of the Gentiles’ entry into Israel, they had misinterpreted them to mean that the Gentiles would one day embrace the Deuteronomic covenant and its Law. The Pharisees did not imagine that God would act in a far bolder way to bring about a ‘new thing’ (cf. Isaiah 43:19)” (Pimentel, Witnesses of the Messiah, 103). Peter, in fact, witnessed the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles and baptized them. When Peter did this, he affirmed that a person is brought into the New Covenant not by circumcision but by Baptism and the Holy Spirit. Through this sacrament and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Gentiles are brought to share in the eternal love of the Trinity.

Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, I want to love like you did. I will give my life for the sake of others so that they may come to know you and encounter you. I will bear your love into this world and alleviate the sufferings of those around me as best as I can.

Living the Word of God: Do I act like a Pharisee or an Apostle? Do I separate myself from others and judge them? Is there anyone in particular toward whom I act like a Pharisee? Or do I engage others like the Apostles and bring them to Christ?