by Fr. Tommy Lane
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” (John 15:9) These words of Jesus in our Gospel today are, in a sense, rather startling. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” Think of how much the Father loves Jesus. This is truly startling. How much does the Father love Jesus? Infinitely. We cannot even begin to imagine. Many times throughout this Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of his unity with his Father. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); “The Father is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10:38); “the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me” (14:24); “I am not alone for the Father is with me” (16:32). And there are many other statements by Jesus in John showing his unity with his Father.
Again, Jesus said, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” While Jesus loves all the 8 billion people in the world, he also has a particular love for you. You are not just a drop in the ocean of 8 billion. Jesus loves you uniquely, personally. And he has loved you for all eternity. There is no one else with your fingerprint. There never was a person just the same as you and never again will be. Jesus loves you uniquely and personally with your particular fingerprint and temperament.
There is a beautiful psalm that expresses this divine love, Psalm 139. We do not hear it any Sunday or Holyday (we hear part of it on June 24, and we pray it on Wednesday week IV during Vespers), but it beautifully expresses God’s closeness to us at all times even while we were growing in our mother’s womb. This is an excerpt:
O Lord, you search me
and you know me.
You know my resting and my rising,
you
discern my purpose from afar.
You mark when I walk or lie down,
all my ways lie open to you.
Before ever a word is
on my tongue,
you know it, O Lord, through and through.
Behind
and before, you besiege me,
your hand ever laid upon me.
Too
wonderful for me, this knowledge,
too high, beyond my reach.
O where can I go from
your spirit,
or where can I flee from your face?
If I climb
the heavens, you are there.
If I lie in the grave, you are there.
If I take the wings of
the dawn
or dwell at the sea’s furthest end,
even there your
hand would lead me,
your right hand would hold me fast…
For it was you who
created my being,
knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I
thank you for the wonder of my being,
For the wonders of all your
creation.
Already you knew my
soul,
my body held no secret from you,
when I was being
fashioned in secret
and molded in the depths of the earth. (Ps
139:1b-10, 13-15, Grail translation)
So think of how much Jesus loves you. We cannot even begin to imagine. Jesus said, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” Just in case we still do not get it, we hear Jesus also say in today’s Gospel,
No one has greater
love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John
15:13)
That is precisely what Jesus did for us. He laid down his life for us in his passion and death and took it up again in his resurrection.
Jesus did not just tell us how much he loves us. He said something else, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” He asks us to remain in loving friendship with him and says we will do that by keeping his commandments. But when we love Jesus, commandments do not even seem like commandments because they are the natural response to Jesus’ love for us.
No one has greater
love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John
15:13)
As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. (John
15:9)
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2021
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
Remain in my love 2018
The sacrificial love of Jesus and the miraculous crucifix of Limpias
Related Homilies: Homilies on God’s love for us and loving others
God’s covenantal love for us 2010
Loving others as Jesus loved us
Jesus the bridegroom loves the Church his bride
on laying down one’s life, see St. Damien of Molokai and St. Patrick