St. Matthias
Jn 15:9-17
As 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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.
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. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Laying Down One’s Life
The heart of the Spiritual Exercises is friendship with Jesus. We pray for the foundational grace “to know Jesus more intimately, to love him more intensely, and to follow him more closely.”
When I read Jesus’ invitation to friendship in today’s Gospel, I’m tempted to skip ahead, to assume I already know all I need to know—even that line about laying down one’s life for one’s friends. I think of my wife, my children; of course, I’d do anything for them.
But then I return to those three key words in that foundational grace: know, love, follow. These aren’t achieved in one sitting. It takes committed effort to really know, love and then desire to follow someone—a beloved friend.
The hard work of laying down one’s life does not occur in action-packed fight scenes. We’re invited into it through the relationships we cultivate each day—an ongoing exercise.
—Eric A. Clayton is the author of Cannonball Moments: Telling Your Story, Deepening Your Faith, and the deputy director of communications at the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.
Prayer
Eternal God, eternal Trinity,
You have made the Blood of Christ so precious
through His sharing in Your Divine nature.
You are a mystery as deep as the sea;
the more I search, the more I find,
and the more I find the more I search for You.
But I can never be satisfied;
what I receive will ever leave me desiring more.
When You fill my soul I have an ever-greater hunger,
and I grow more famished for Your light.
I desire above all to see You,
the true light, as you really are. Amen.
—St. Catherine of Siena