This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.
Jesus calls us to love one another with love like that with which he loves us. He lays down his life for us. In turn, we are called to give our lives in the service of one another. This love is revolutionary. It has the power to completely change the world. Imagine a world of people focused more on what they can do for others than what they can get for themselves. The Church is meant to be this community in miniature, showing the world just what is possible.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
The love to which we are called is the key to true friendship with God. Only by receiving and living this love do we understand everything the Father tells Jesus. Only this love can bear fruit that will truly last. Other fruit quickly goes rotten. Only love is sustainable because it allows us to be rooted in something more real than selfish pride.
The love Jesus shows us calls us to be witnesses.
Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men
who accompanied us the whole time
the Lord Jesus came and went among us,
beginning from the baptism of John
until the day on which he was taken up from us,
become with us a witness to his resurrection.
The resurrection is proof that the fruit of this sort of love remains forever. In rising from the dead Jesus gives new life to all who will accept it. Let us accept his invitation to be his friends and to embrace this selfless love he shows us. The apparent limits of this love prove not to be limits for him. They will not be limits for his friends either.
He raises up the lowly from the dust;
from the dunghill he lifts up the poor
To seat them with princes,
with the princes of his own people.
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