{"id":5002,"date":"2024-05-05T14:48:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T13:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=5002"},"modified":"2024-05-17T11:54:12","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T10:54:12","slug":"commentary-on-the-6th-sunday-of-easter-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-the-6th-sunday-of-easter-b\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on the 6th Sunday of Easter (B) 5.05.2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Fr Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/h3>\n

Jn 15:9-17<\/b><\/p>\n

Jesus said, \u2018As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.\u00a0 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.\u00a0 <\/em>
\nThis is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.\u00a0 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.\u00a0 You are my friends if you do what I command you.\u00a0 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.\u00a0 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.\u00a0 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.\u00a0\u00a0 If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

How can you be commanded<\/em> to love?\u00a0 Surely love has to be a free response, not an obligation.\u00a0 You can be commanded to obey, but how can you be commanded to love?\u00a0 How could Jesus say, “This is my commandment, that you love one another?”<\/p>\n

Meister Eckhart threw a clear light on this conundrum.\u00a0 He said, “When I am thirsty, the drink commands me; when I am hungry, the food commands me. And God does the same [when God commands me to love].”\u00a0 In other words, the command to love is not a command that is laid on us from the outside; it is an inner command, an inner urgency placed in our very being by God \u2013 like hunger and thirst; or, you might say, like the urgency that an acorn has to develop into an oak tree.\u00a0 It is not something alien, it is totally our own, and yet it is totally from God \u2013 because God is totally our own, “more ours,” said Tauler, “than anything else we own.”\u00a0 If God is totally ours, then God’s commands are totally ours.<\/p>\n

Probably most us grew up with the belief that God was somewhere else, not here; that heaven was a place where God lived far away.\u00a0 Any communication from such a God would be an intrusion from the outside.\u00a0 Certainly we also said that God was everywhere, but these two thoughts may never have overlapped or touched each other at all.\u00a0 If we also had the wrong kind of fear of God, we may then have imagined God everywhere in the way that a controlling headmaster is ‘everywhere’ in the school \u2013 meaning that no matter what you did, he found out about it.<\/p>\n

Our thoughts and feelings about God are always in need of a great deal of healing.\u00a0 This should be happening naturally, through the grace of God, in the course of our daily life; but prayer and meditation are the favoured place for it to happen.\u00a0 There the experience of the day is sifted without interference and comes around slowly into the right perspective.\u00a0 We can confidently hope to be able to enjoy our faith.\u00a0 Meister Eckhart again: “If anyone commands me to do that which is pleasant, which avails me or on which my bliss depends, that is exceedingly sweet to me.”<\/p>\n

Joy is very close to the heart of our faith.\u00a0 Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21), and wants to draw us into his own joy (John 15:11).\u00a0 Paul mentions joy as a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).\u00a0 St Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Since the enjoyment of God\u2026 surpasses the power of all creatures, it follows that this complete and perfect joy does not enter into us but rather we enter into it.\u00a0 ‘Enter into the joy of your Lord’ (Matthew 25.21).”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Fr Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Jn 15:9-17 Jesus said, \u2018As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.\u00a0 I have said these things<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5002"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8202,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions\/8202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}