REGINA CAELI 17 May 2020 This Sunday’s Gospel passage (cf. Jn 14:15-21) presents two messages: observance of the commandments and the promise of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus links love for him to observance of the commandments, and he insists on this in his farewell discourse: “If you love me, then you will keep my commandments” (v. 15); “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (v. 21). Jesus asks us to love him, but explains: this love does not end in a desire for him, or in a feeling, no; it demands the willingness to follow his way, that is, the will of the Father. And this is summarized in the commandment of mutual love — the first love [in its fulfillment] — given by Jesus himself: “even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34). He did not say, ‘Love me as I have loved you’, but ‘love one another as I have loved you’. He loves us without asking us to do the same in return. Jesus’ love is a gratuitous love; he never asks for the same in return. And he wants this gratuitous love of his to become the concrete form of life among us: this is his will.
To help the disciples walk this path, Jesus promises to pray for the Father to send “another Counselor” (v. 16), that is, a Consoler, a Defender, who will take his place and give them the intelligence to listen and the courage to observe his words. This is the Holy Spirit, who is the Gift of God’s love that descends into the heart of the Christian. After Jesus has died and risen, his love is given to those who believe in him and are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit himself guides them, enlightens them, strengthens them, so that everyone may walk in life, even through adversity and difficulty, in joys and sorrows, remaining on Jesus’ path. This is possible precisely by remaining docile to the Holy Spirit, so that, through his presence at work in us, he may not only console but transform hearts, opening them up to truth and love.
Faced with the experience of error and sin — which we all do — the Holy Spirit helps us not to succumb and enables us to grasp and fully live the meaning of Jesus’ words: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (v. 15). The commandments are not given to us as a kind of mirror in which to see the reflection of our miseries, our inconsistencies. No, they are not like that. The Word of God is given to us as the Word of life, which transforms the heart, life; which renews, which does not judge in order to condemn, but heals and has forgiveness as its aim. God’s mercy is thus. A Word that is light for our steps. All this is the work of the Holy Spirit! He is the Gift of God; he is God himself, who helps us to be free people, people who want and know how to love, people who understand that life is a mission to proclaim the wonders that the Lord accomplishes in those who trust in him.
May the Virgin Mary, model of the Church, who knows how to listen to the Word of God and to welcome the gift of the Holy Spirit, help us to live the Gospel with joy, knowing that we are sustained by the Spirit, the divine fire that warms our hearts and illuminates our steps.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER DEUS CARITAS EST OF THE PONTIFF BENEDICT XVI He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.
In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself. Idem velle atque idem nolle [9]—to want the same thing, and to reject the same thing—was recognized by antiquity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought. The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.[10] Then self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy (cf. Ps 73 [72]:23-28).
18. Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbour which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence.
FAUSTI - Christianity is first of all of all love for Jesus, who assimilates us to Him, the Son, giving us His Love for the Father and for our brothers and sisters. By loving Him, we become what He is; and we can love our brothers and sisters with His Love, which is the same as that of the Father. Love is not only a feeling. It engages the whole person, giving him or her a new way of being. It informs his or her understanding, will and action. Concretely one loves through facts and in truth. (1 Jn 3:18). Observing His commandments is the condition for remaining in the covenant of the faithful God, who has loved, chosen and freed us. We can observe them out of duty, as slaves, as elder brother does... (Lk 15:29), or for the love of sons. For Jesus the principle of observance is the love of a heart that knows how to be loved, the new heart of the new covenant. He calls them "my" (commands) because the Scriptures and Moses are written about Him, and He speaks of "commands" in the plural because His command, even if it is one (Jn 13:34), is also manifold. Love in fact expresses itself in every single action and makes us discern, here and now, what is best to do. Jesus, with His leaving, becomes the pontiff between us and God, the Brother intercessor with the Father . He opens up for us access to Him and to His gifts. Jesus asks for us to the Father the definitive gift. He obtains everything He asks. (11,42). For this reason the Counselor is certainly given to us. We pray .. in order to dispose ourselves to receive Him. " The Comforter" because " to be with someone who's alone , so that he's not alone anymore. The Comforter is the One who is "with" us, offering us that company that overcomes our radical loneliness. This Comforter is another compared to Jesus, who is now leaving. He is given by the Father to those who love the Son and observe His commands. The Spirit is Life; the Spirit of Truth can be translated as "true, authentic life", the life of God. This Life is given back to us by the knowledge of the Son, who frees us from lies and makes us live in the Love of the Father. The Spirit of truth is the opposite of the spirit of lying, the origin of our evils. The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of the Son, who said to Thomas: "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life". The world, as a succubus of lies, cannot yet receive the Spirit of Truth. It cannot receive Him, because it is incapable of seeing Him and knowing Him. In fact, in a few hours, it will take and hang on wood the Lord of Glory. The Spirit of Truth has reside with us in Jesus, the Son who lives the very Love of the Father for us: in Him we have known and believed in the Love that God has for us. In a few hours, that Love which was "with" and " among" us, will be "in us". This is the supreme gift that the Son communicates to us from the Cross, where "all is accomplished" and where He delivers His Spirit. The disciples, through the death of Jesus, are not left orphans. On the contrary, they find their place with the Father, because they receive the same Love of the Son. His leaving is in reality His coming to us, indeed His being in us with His Spirit who makes us sons, in communion with Him and with the Father. The world, which now does not see the Spirit of Truth in Jesus, will soon no longer see Jesus either. It will physically eliminate Him. The disciples will continue to see Him. But they will see Him in a new way: through the wounds of His hands and side, which show His Love, source of joy and peace.
--->Jesus has in Himself the life that overcomes death (11:25). On Easter Day we will know that Jesus is in the Father, that He loves Him and raises Him up; we will also know that we are in the Son, because He loved us and gave His Life for us; we will know that He is in us, because we love Him and keep His Words. Through the mutual immanence of us in the Son and the Son in us, we know that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son. On that day we will share in the knowledge of love that exists between Father and Son: we will share in the Life of God. "To have Jesus' commands means to make them one's own and to live them. Listening to the word and not observing it is the impiety denounced by the prophets. Jesus says that he who loves Him observes His commands, here He says that the one who observes His commands loves Him. Love is the beginning and the aim of following His commandments: if love makes one live as He does, then living as He realizes the love. The Father loves all men, even if they ignore Him and reject Him. But only those who love the Son and observe His commands have the Son within themselves and experience the Father's love for Him. Accepting the Father's gratuitous love is the act of freedom that makes us what we are: sons who love because they are loved. The Son too has always loved us, like the Father, even if we deny Him like Peter and betray Him like Judas. The fact that He loves us in this way will allow us to experience His love for us. Only he who loves knows the love by which he is loved. Without love for Jesus, there is no knowledge of Him, nor of the Father, nor of the Spirit: "He who does not love has not known God, because God is Love," says the Evangelist in His first letter.
POPE FRANCIS
RispondiEliminaREGINA CAELI 17 May 2020
This Sunday’s Gospel passage (cf. Jn 14:15-21) presents two messages: observance of the commandments and the promise of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus links love for him to observance of the commandments, and he insists on this in his farewell discourse: “If you love me, then you will keep my commandments” (v. 15); “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (v. 21). Jesus asks us to love him, but explains: this love does not end in a desire for him, or in a feeling, no; it demands the willingness to follow his way, that is, the will of the Father. And this is summarized in the commandment of mutual love — the first love [in its fulfillment] — given by Jesus himself: “even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34). He did not say, ‘Love me as I have loved you’, but ‘love one another as I have loved you’. He loves us without asking us to do the same in return. Jesus’ love is a gratuitous love; he never asks for the same in return. And he wants this gratuitous love of his to become the concrete form of life among us: this is his will.
To help the disciples walk this path, Jesus promises to pray for the Father to send “another Counselor” (v. 16), that is, a Consoler, a Defender, who will take his place and give them the intelligence to listen and the courage to observe his words. This is the Holy Spirit, who is the Gift of God’s love that descends into the heart of the Christian. After Jesus has died and risen, his love is given to those who believe in him and are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit himself guides them, enlightens them, strengthens them, so that everyone may walk in life, even through adversity and difficulty, in joys and sorrows, remaining on Jesus’ path. This is possible precisely by remaining docile to the Holy Spirit, so that, through his presence at work in us, he may not only console but transform hearts, opening them up to truth and love.
Faced with the experience of error and sin — which we all do — the Holy Spirit helps us not to succumb and enables us to grasp and fully live the meaning of Jesus’ words: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (v. 15). The commandments are not given to us as a kind of mirror in which to see the reflection of our miseries, our inconsistencies. No, they are not like that. The Word of God is given to us as the Word of life, which transforms the heart, life; which renews, which does not judge in order to condemn, but heals and has forgiveness as its aim. God’s mercy is thus. A Word that is light for our steps. All this is the work of the Holy Spirit! He is the Gift of God; he is God himself, who helps us to be free people, people who want and know how to love, people who understand that life is a mission to proclaim the wonders that the Lord accomplishes in those who trust in him.
May the Virgin Mary, model of the Church, who knows how to listen to the Word of God and to welcome the gift of the Holy Spirit, help us to live the Gospel with joy, knowing that we are sustained by the Spirit, the divine fire that warms our hearts and illuminates our steps.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
RispondiEliminaDEUS CARITAS EST
OF THE PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.
In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself. Idem velle atque idem nolle [9]—to want the same thing, and to reject the same thing—was recognized by antiquity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought. The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.[10] Then self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy (cf. Ps 73 [72]:23-28).
18. Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbour which
the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence.
FAUSTI -
RispondiEliminaChristianity is first of all of all love for Jesus, who assimilates us to Him, the Son, giving us His Love for the Father and for our brothers and sisters.
By loving Him, we become what He is; and we can love our brothers and sisters with His Love, which is the same as that of the Father.
Love is not only a feeling. It engages the whole person, giving him or her a new way of being. It informs his or her understanding, will and action.
Concretely one loves through facts and in truth. (1 Jn 3:18).
Observing His commandments is the condition for remaining in the covenant of the faithful God, who has loved, chosen and freed us. We can observe them out of duty, as slaves, as elder brother does...
(Lk 15:29), or for the love of sons.
For Jesus the principle of observance is the love of a heart that knows how to be loved, the new heart of the new covenant.
He calls them "my" (commands) because the Scriptures and Moses are written about Him, and He speaks of "commands" in the plural because His command, even if it is one (Jn 13:34), is also manifold.
Love in fact expresses itself in every single action and makes us discern, here and now, what is best to do.
Jesus, with His leaving, becomes the pontiff between us and God, the Brother intercessor with the Father .
He opens up for us access to Him and to His gifts.
Jesus asks for us to the Father the definitive gift.
He obtains everything He asks. (11,42).
For this reason the Counselor is certainly given to us.
We pray .. in order to dispose ourselves to receive Him.
" The Comforter" because " to be with someone who's alone , so that he's not alone anymore. The Comforter is the One who is "with" us, offering us that company that overcomes our radical loneliness.
This Comforter is another compared to Jesus, who is now leaving.
He is given by the Father to those who love the Son and observe His commands. The Spirit is Life; the Spirit of Truth can be translated as "true, authentic life", the life of God. This Life is given back to us by the knowledge of the Son, who frees us from lies and makes us live in the Love of the Father. The Spirit of truth is the opposite of the spirit of lying, the origin of our evils.
The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of the Son, who said to Thomas: "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life".
The world, as a succubus of lies, cannot yet receive the Spirit of Truth. It cannot receive Him, because it is incapable of seeing Him and knowing Him. In fact, in a few hours, it will take and hang on wood the Lord of Glory.
The Spirit of Truth has reside with us in Jesus, the Son who lives the very Love of the Father for us: in Him we have known and believed in the Love that God has for us.
In a few hours, that Love which was "with" and " among" us, will be "in us".
This is the supreme gift that the Son communicates to us from the Cross, where "all is accomplished" and where He delivers His Spirit.
The disciples, through the death of Jesus, are not left orphans. On the contrary, they find their place with the Father, because they receive the same Love of the Son.
His leaving is in reality His coming to us, indeed His being in us with His Spirit who makes us sons, in communion with Him and with the Father.
The world, which now does not see the Spirit of Truth in Jesus, will soon no longer see Jesus either. It will physically eliminate Him.
The disciples will continue to see Him. But they will see Him in a new way: through the wounds of His hands and side, which show His Love, source of joy and peace.
--->Jesus has in Himself the life that overcomes death (11:25).
RispondiEliminaOn Easter Day we will know that Jesus is in the Father, that He loves Him and raises Him up; we will also know that we are in the Son, because He loved us and gave His Life for us; we will know that He is in us, because we love Him and keep His Words.
Through the mutual immanence of us in the Son and the Son in us, we know that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son.
On that day we will share in the knowledge of love that exists between Father and Son: we will share in the Life of God.
"To have Jesus' commands means to make them one's own and to live them. Listening to the word and not observing it is the impiety denounced by the prophets.
Jesus says that he who loves Him observes His commands, here He says that the one who observes His commands loves Him.
Love is the beginning and the aim of following His commandments: if love makes one live as He does, then living as He realizes the love.
The Father loves all men, even if they ignore Him and reject Him.
But only those who love the Son and observe His commands have the Son within themselves and experience the Father's love for Him.
Accepting the Father's gratuitous love is the act of freedom that makes us what we are: sons who love because they are loved.
The Son too has always loved us, like the Father, even if we deny Him like Peter and betray Him like Judas.
The fact that He loves us in this way will allow us to experience His love for us.
Only he who loves knows the love by which he is loved.
Without love for Jesus, there is no knowledge of Him, nor of the Father, nor of the Spirit: "He who does not love has not known God, because God is Love," says the Evangelist in His first letter.