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Commentary to the 6th Easter Sunday B
THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI
A good Easter to all.
The word love is often repeated in our conversations and is the subject of poems, novels, songs, and so on. But what does love mean, what does the expression 'I love you' mean? People in love are almost afraid to pronounce it because they know that it is very demanding; in fact, they usually let a long-time pass before making this declaration of love.
In general, if we place love in the sentimental sphere, we tend to identify it with attractiveness that awakens in us all that is beautiful: nice, jovial people fascinate us, and we fall in love with them. And we also fall in love with art, music, science - in short, with everything that is beautiful, because wherever there is beauty, we are attracted to it and we want to have it for ourselves.
This love was called by the Greeks 'eros'; it is a beautiful compulsion that comes from our nature created by God. It is God who made us so needy of the beauty of the other. If we were self-sufficient, we would shut ourselves from the surroundings; but because we are not complete, we are compelled to seek the other. Plato quoted the myth of the origin of Eros, he said that he was the son of Penia, his mother and always in need of her. Maternal dependence is what pushes us to look for what can fill that need we feel. Eros, erotic love pushes us to seek the other for what they can give us. But it is only one aspect of love and we must not confuse the erotic love with the love that God wants, that Jesus speaks about today in the gospel.
The erotic drive can also enclose us in a selfish search to serve the self, forgetting that we are called not only to welcome what the other can give us to enrich us, but also to give to the other what he or she needs. We know that eros borders on selfishness, the pursuit of self-satisfaction and, therefore, to instrumentalize the other, which can even lead us to degrading behaviors. We know that if interpersonal relationships are based only on the erotic drive, on natural attraction, they are very fragile and unstable. It doesn't take much to tear them down and destroy them, and it is difficult to establish lasting and definitive, faithful bonds, only with erotic love.
The love of which we shall speak in today's gospel is commanded because it does not come from the biological, instinctive nature, it comes from another nature. Today's text comes immediately after what we heard last Sunday; we remember that Jesus spoke to us about the true vine that must bear the fruits that the Father expects. Today Jesus tells us clearly what this fruit of the true vine consists of: love, but not the love that comes from our biological nature, eros, but it comes from a new nature, the one that God gave us, the nature of the sons and daughters of God. Only the sons and daughters of God are capable of this love and indeed this love has a new name called 'agape', not eros.
Agape comes from the verb 'agapán' which was practically never used in classical Greece. It appears only about ten times in all ancient Greek texts. The Greeks dedicated hymns of exaltation to eros, they did not speak of agape. And agape has become, instead, the characteristic expression of the Christian conception of love. 36 In the discourse that Jesus makes to his disciples during the Last Supper the verb ‘love’ is repeated 25 times, not eros but agape, agapán. We will hear this verb repeated 5 times in today's passage and the term love is repeated four times.
Let us hear now how and who has involved us in this new nature that makes us capable of this love.
"At that time Jesus said, as the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.”
"As the Father loves me, so I also love you." This is the origin of the love that Jesus says is his, it does not come from nature. From nature comes eros. When in a person or in an object we discover something precious, we desire it and we feel fulfilled when we get hold of it and make it ours, this is eros. Eros cannot exist in God because in God there is no such poverty, in him all is richness because He only loves, because He is love, He gives, He does not seek but gives.
Agape is independent of what the other can give me, I seek him or her only because I want his or her good, I want him or her to be happy, I seek him or her because I have realized that he or she needs my love and I'm willing to put all my life to make him or her happy, to make him or her live in joy. The love of Jesus is an absolutely gratuitous love, in pure loss, it does not claim anything in return. Of course he tries to involve the other in this same dynamics of gratuitousness because only in this way one becomes fully a person. The last step of human evolution is not the 'sapiens - sapiens'. The 'sapiens - sapiens' can become a builder, a skilled manager of science and technology.
The last step in evolution is the person who loves because knowledge could still be a beast. One is really a person only when he or she lets emerge in his or her own life this new nature which is that of the child of God that leads him or her to love his brother or sister as Jesus did. It is a love that dispenses with goodness, with beauty and even the fact that the other be a friend or an enemy, one who has done me good or one who hates me and who wants perhaps to harm me; agape expresses the total and unconditional donation to the other. And being an unconditional, gratuitous love, it reaches also the enemy and therefore does not come from our biological nature that takes us to the opposite direction; it comes from the Father, it is a gift from heaven that Jesus brought us. And this love is the very nature of God; it is the 'gold' that God is made of and it is nothing else but this pure, unconditional love.
Jesus is the beloved, the one who is fully involved in this divine life and who manifests himself in us in us in the gift, in becoming bread by consuming the last crumb of his own life for the love of humanity. And that is why Jesus' invitation is 'remain in my love'. It is a sealed love, one can immediately recognize the aroma of this love because it is free. The expression of erotic love that we experience is beautiful and good... when the young man says to his bride 'I can't live without you...' here is his poverty; 'I'm willing to do anything to have you
because if you are not mine I will never be happy.' This is eros.
The declaration of love that Jesus makes and that we have to make if we are moved by this love is this: 'I love you so much that I am willing to do anything to see you happy, the goal of my life is your happiness... I would give my life to make you happy even if you hate me,' even if you crucify me, Jesus would say. This love is not naturally opposed to the erotic impulse that God has placed, but it sublimates eros, brings it to its full realization in the gift of self, receiving the beauty of the other and giving to the other one's own gifts. Eros reaches the peak of its greatness when it is lived as a gift, not as a possession. Unlike the eros that comes naturally and spontaneously, the love of Jesus, Christian love, is commanded.
Let us listen:
“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 may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”
Jesus has recommended to abide in his love, but how does one abide in this love? He says: "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." The commandment... and, immediately afterwards he says that the commandment is only one: "love one another as I love you.”
First of all, in what does the observance of the commandments consist of? What are the commandments that God gives and that must be obeyed? These were the commandments that we find from the Old Testament: an external law that people had to obey to be faithful to God. The commandment Jesus is talking about does not come from outside, it is not something external, a law written on stone that I have to learn and obey. The commandments that Jesus obeyed were within him and these commandments are within us.
What were the commandments that Jesus obeyed? Not the outward commands that his Father would tell him every day what he had to do. The commands came to him from his nature as a Son of God; it was this nature that led him to love unconditionally. If he had not loved he would not have been himself. And it is from this new nature of children of God that come the commands that we receive.
And now we ask ourselves: are there many or only one? It is only one commandment that comes from within: to love unconditionally as the heavenly Father, as Jesus does. But this single commandment is then manifested in many concrete situations in which I am called upon to manifest this love. Indeed, we are reminded in the first letter of John how love for God, that is, abiding in this love, cannot be separated from love of brothers and sisters. ‘He who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he say that he loves God whom he does not see,’ this is the commandment which we have received from him: loving even his own brother or sister as if were God, and this love—always in the first letter of John— it is said that it is not a love made with the tongue and with words, but with deeds of truth. Again in chapter 4 of this first letter, John says: "Herein is love, it was not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave us his Son: dear friends, if God so loved us, we also ought to love our brothers and sisters.” It does not tell us that if he has loved us in this manner we are to respond to his love by loving him. No, the response to his love is to love others as he taught us to love.
The Old Testament did not know this love that was brought into the world by Jesus with the divine life that was given to us. The ultimate rule of love for the Old Testament was 'whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them.' That is the law and the prophets. That's what the Old Testament summed up in the law of love. Whatever you want people to do, it said, do it to them. Now the measure is no longer this justice but the love that Jesus manifested, the love that is the love of God that is free, without measure, unconditional.
What is our fear to accept this love? The fear of losing ourselves because we give without measure. Jesus tells us, 'be careful because it is in this love where my joy is and I want this joy to be in you and your joy be complete.’ Jesus said a phrase that is not found in the gospels but in the Acts of the Apostles: "There is more joy in giving than in receiving." Eros leads us to seek to get from the other, agape leads us not to take into account what the other can give me but to give in pure loss. This is the love of God.
We experience so many joys in our life when we meet the person with whom we share the love of God - Like our whole existence in married life; or it is a great and immense joy when we get a diploma... it's a great joy but we ask ourselves: after all these joys… then what? We are made for infinite joy and no joy of this world can satisfy us. There was an able medieval saying: 'For the one who is made for God, nothing that is inferior to God will satisfy him.' We have written in our DNA the need for infinity. The Qohelet had already understood it: the longing for heaven, the longing that directs us to God, and until we have reached God, we don't experience joy. To have God means to abide in this love.
This lasting joy is present only in those who abide in this love. and that is why it is a joy that is experienced when things go well and also when things go badly, when we are in good health and when we are sick, when our friends are faithful to us and when they abandon us and even betray us. The first sign therefore, that if we have blocked love is, that joy is extinguished in us. There the pleasure, the selfish satisfaction, the eros, may remain, but not joy because the fullness of joy is born only from this love.
There is another aspect of love which is not expressed by the verb agapán, but with the verb 'filéin.' It is the love between friends; and Jesus wants to involve us also in this form of love.
Let's listen to what he tells us:
"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.”
No, I do not call them servants, says Jesus, yet servant of the Lord was the highest of honorific titles that we find in the Old Testament, a title reserved to the great personages:
Moses, David, Joshua and the like. In the New Testament, Paul presents himself as a servant of the Lord, and even a woman, the only one, Mary, is called by the primitive community, servant of the Lord. And, precisely, Luke puts in her mouth this marvelous expression: 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord' to indicate the complete availability of this woman to serve God's plan of love for the world.
Now there is a new title of honor: 'friend.' And Jesus immediately emphasizes the difference between the servant and the friend and says: the servant does not know what are the plans of his lord, the servant obeys the orders and does not have to ask why he has to bow his head to do what he is ordered to do. The relationship between friends is completely different. Imagine what it meant at the time of Jesus to be a friend of Caesar; the commander of the army is an important personage who must be obeyed. The head of the Praetorium had to be obeyed. Caesar's friend had free access to the palace without following labels and without schedules, he could meet with the emperor at any time and was privy to all the secrets of the empire and the government.
We also have a report of friendship even in the Old Testament: Abraham is called the friend of God, he is the one to whom the Lord entrusted his problems. We remember the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were two cities where the people behaved badly and God unburdens himself to his friend Abraham and tells him: "Look, I am compelled to do away with these two cities."
Jesus does not want a servant relationship with him, he wants disciples who are friends, and this means, sharing his project with full trust and the commitment to carry out this project together with him. Jesus cannot call his disciples 'servants' because he has revealed to them what he has heard from the Father: God's design of love upon the world and he wants to involve them, he wants to convince them that they have to work with him for the realization of this plan of love, and only friends are entrusted with these family secrets while servants remain in the dark and if we still behave as servants we will not engage freely and with conviction in his proposal to us.
Unfortunately, I believe that there are still many who are stuck in the relationship that Moses established with God: that of obedient subjects to a lawgiver, that of the employer who pays his employee at the end of the day. Many still like this spirituality because they are convinced that they accumulate merit in front of this boss that is God. No, no more, says Jesus; this is a spirituality that must be abandoned.
Jesus wants to involve us to make us understand how beautiful his plan is and when he succeeds in convincing us, then yes, we are willing to bet our life and risk our life for this plan. And if, on the other hand, we expect orders from him, he will not give them to us, he wants to convince us and he wants to involve us freely.
Of course, friendship is linked then to gratuitousness, the service rendered by a friend is not paid. Even today we know that if I have to do a job in a friend's house, the maximum I would ask for is that he pays me for the material but not for the work; the work is on my account because among friends there is happiness of serving the other, of seeing him happy and having done something for him. It is the logic of the gift. When I make a gift, the other person doesn't have to pay me in return, because I don't want him to pay me, I just want him to understand that I am happy to be his friend, I want him to enter into this love relationship.
When you don't want this friendship, it happens that you receive a gift and then you wonder how I can repay you because I want to cut, I want this relationship to end. Friendship is born out of gratuitousness, out of an exchange of gifts and services totally free of charge. This is the relationship of friendship that Jesus wants to establish with his disciples, this joy of giving freely; and the conclusion of this discourse that Jesus is making is a reminder of his commandment: 'I leave you only this one commandment - that you love one another.' It is the synthesis of the whole proposal of life that Jesus makes to us and that he fulfills with his own person. Beyond this horizon of love that we see realized in him, we cannot go. Beyond this love it is impossible to find a higher human realization because this is the ultimate of the human and it is this love that reveals that the life that is present in us is no longer only that which came from the mud of the earth but also, a life that was given from above by the heavenly Father.
I wish you all a good Easter and a good week.
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