Jn 15:9-17
Love Each Other
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
We have read and meditated on these words many times, but each time we do we see something else, something consoling, something challenging. St. Francis de Sales, whose Memorial we commemorate today, is able to piece it into the practical: "Let us make our way through the low valleys of the humble virtues. There we wills see roses among thorns; charity shining forth amid interior and exterior affliction, lilies of purity, and violets of mortification. We ought to love above all others these three small virtues, meekness of heart, poverty of spirit, and simplicity of life, together with those common labors of visiting the sick, serving the poor, and consoling the afflicted. Yet let it all be done freely and without anxiety."
Bro. Rene
Dear God, let me not hold back in keeping you command to love one another. Amen.
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