The union between Jesus and His followers is not a hierarchy of power, but a flowering of friendship and love (John 15:9-17). The full import of the allegorical metaphor of the vine and its branches is here interpreted through an ecclesiology of love.
Divine example
“AS the Father loves me” sets the tone for Jesus. It is divine love that explains the mystery of the incarnation of love in Jesus. From within the procession of love in the Trinity, the Son brought redeeming love into the world for humankind to learn and imitate. This love Jesus bears for humanity is the direct fruit of the Father’s love for the Son. “Remain in my love”—love means communion. Jesus Himself remains totally with all His will in the love of His Father, as the Father is completely in the love of the Son. Jesus wishes the same intimacy with His disciples. Whereas God is love and lives in perfect unity from within, humankind needed to be called to love and needs still to prioritize love and live by it. To remain (a favorite expression in St. John) is to abide, to live on in Jesus who is God’s love for us; it is sharing in the life that unites Jesus with the Father. Not to remain forgoes sharing in that vitality and grace; it is to die like branches cut off from the vine.
Like the sheep that follow the voice of the good shepherd, Jesus’ disciples need to listen to His voice and keep His words and commandments; the branches remain on the vine when His words remain in them. Jesus Himself remains in His Father’s love by keeping His commandments and living according to His words. Communion of love expresses itself in the fidelity that is between the lovers.
The commandment of love
The foremost commandment Jesus entrusts to His disciples is “Love one another as I love you.” The flow and circle of love originating in the love of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit and incarnated in the love of Jesus for each of us is replicated in our love for one another. Thus is created Jesus’ community (ecclesia, katipunan) with us and among us. The command to love indicates that it is not something out of our natural human power, rather it depends solely on Jesus and God who commands it. To be so God-like is to move beyond human nature in a supernatural imitation of the Son of God.
This Christian love is as extraordinary as to die for someone. Where our natural drive is to hang on to life, Jesus sets before us His own example as the standard: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” A friend is someone worth offering one’s life for, and Jesus calls us friends, not slaves who do not share in the inmost life of their master. Jesus assures us that He has told us everything He has heard from His Father; in loving us, we are in intimacy with Jesus and in community with the Father who gives us whatever we ask Him in Jesus’ name. It is a community of encircling and self-offering love, of fidelity and obedience to one another. It is a communion in the Spirit of joy, divine joy shared with us and remaining in us until it is completed in eternity. For our part, we are Jesus’ friends who do what He commands us. He has chosen us and appointed us to bear fruit, privileged to share His life like the branches on the vine bearing abundant fruits of love.
Alálaong bagá, the life of communion with Jesus is to be in a community of persons bonded together by the love of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. It is a joyous katipunan (church), a gathering of friends obedient to the divine words and whose norm is “my life for others.” This union of life in love rests on the awareness that Jesus is in each one and that the image of the Father is in all. It is the gathering where a neighbor is a friend, and so where society becomes the neighborhood of friends you offer your life for.
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