Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
It is the love of Jesus that makes it possible for us to keep his word since, "We love because he first loved us" (see First John 4:19). And this implies that it the Holy Spirit, who is love, that makes us able to love Jesus and keep his words. On our own, the best we can hope for a superficial response. We might momentarily grasp the expediency of obedience and respond with our best efforts. But in order for it to be more than a momentary response we need the teaching of Jesus to penetrate more deeply until it is imprinted on our hearts. Then it will be more than our strategic evaluation that makes us decide each moment whether or not to obey, leaving each consecutive decision at the same risk of failure as the previous.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.
Once the Holy Spirit is teaching us from within we begin to learn to obey Jesus in a new, more integrated, and more sincere way. It is no longer a utilitarian calculus where we choose the greatest benefit to ourselves. Instead, it begins to be the urgency of love that the Holy Spirit makes us experience that motivates us, as it did, for instance, for Paul (see Second Corinthians 5:14).
When it would be convenient, from the point of view of our ego, to forget the words of Jesus, the Spirit makes us remember. He draws us from lesser to higher goods, when previously the immediacy of the gravity of lesser goods held us at the level of earthly things. He gives us, as has been said, 'a new want to'. But this must be properly qualified and understood. It does not mean that henceforth we only need obey when we feel like it, or that obedience will always be easy going forward. The 'old want to' of the old self still remains within us, and complains and protests to get its way. But once we are renewed by the Holy Spirit we also have another option, a new heart, and a renewed self that is rightly called a new creation. Living from the new self is synonymous with living life in the Spirit. Living from the old self means trying to make do with only our own resources, limited by our own weakness.
The Spirit is the one that joins us to the Father by uniting us to the Son. He makes us cry 'Abba' where before, without him, we were orphans. He is therefore the seal that guarantees our promised inheritance, the life we hope to share with God forever in eternity (see Ephesians 1:14).
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
The world gives peace by the presence of pleasure and by the absence of pain. But Jesus, through his Spirit, offers us a peace that transcends circumstances. It is more constant than the fickle nature of calm feelings. We know that in this world we may stay calm for weeks or months or even years at a time, but then, in a moment, our lives can be turned upside down by catastrophe. But even in the midst of the storms and trials of life, the peace of God can guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 4:5-7). The circumstances themselves may press upon us, and insofar as we experience ourselves alone to face them they will always steal our peace. But no matter what happens it is possible to remember that there is nothing that we face in this life that we need to face alone. The peace of Christ is what comes when we experience the revelation that God himself is for us, that he loves us, and that he makes all things work together for our good. That revelation, and not the feelings of fear and anxiety we sometimes feel, is the deeper truth of reality.
‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’
If we were to sum up our message for today we would say this: we are not alone, and never have been. Jesus is at work to draw us from experience of life as orphans to life secure in the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is from the firm footing of this love that we become empowered to love ourselves, with constancy, and with courage.
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