To keep the Lord's word, you must know what his word is. In the context of Saint John's Gospel Jesus gave that word earlier in the same discourse that our Gospel reading for this Fifth Sunday of Easter is taken. It is a "new" commandment: "As I have loved you, so you also should love one another" (John 13:34).
I know this sounds repetitive. But look around the Church today. How well do you think we're keeping Jesus' word? More importantly, how well are you keeping his word?
In today's Gospel, Jesus foretells his sending of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Paraclete. Is it the "job" of the Holy Spirit to reveal new things? According to Jesus, it is not. What the Holy Spirit does is remind of Jesus' word that we are to "keep".
Because it has been reduced to the idealistic, so-called romantic variety, the word love fails to resonate the way it should. In our passage from John, the word "love," in its original Greek, is the verb agape, in its appropriate form is used. Along with philos and eros, it is one of the words translated into English as love. Philia is the word for the love between friends. Aristotle held that philia is the highest form of love. By contrast, the romantic love to which our singular English word has been reduced is a kind of eros.
Agape refers to self-giving/self-sacrificing love. According to the theology found in the Gospel According to Saint John, Christ hanging on the cross is the supreme act of agape. This is why elsewhere in this Gospel Jesus says, "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself" (John 12:32) and why he tells his disciples: "No one has greater love than this,j to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (John 15:13). He follows this by telling his followers- "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15:14). He commands his followers to love one another in the same manner he loves each of them.
Let's be honest. It's the most difficult thing he could command us to do. It's much easier to keep a bunch of rules, which we can habituate and obey almost without thinking. Because each person and each situation are different, loving others as Jesus loves them always requires discernment and intentionality. To be holy means nothing apart from loving perfectly.
What I am trying to explain is exemplified very well in our first reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles. In this passage, we hear about the anachronistically named "Council of Jerusalem." The dispute was about whether Gentile converts were required to keep the Law, to adhere to the rules laid down in the Torah. Specifically, it had to do with whether male Gentile converts had to be circumcised and whether all Gentile converts had to adhere to the Jewish dietary laws. In the end, it was determined that circumcision was not required. Neither was adhering to the Jewish dietary laws. Gentile Christians were to avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols and to adhere to the rules on marriage laid down in the Torah.
Despite it being determined quite early on, this dispute continued to pop-up in the communities founded by Paul, in which Gentiles were likely the majority. But in the eighth chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that eating meat sacrificed to idols is okay, but with an important caveat. (1 Corinthians 8). What is the caveat? His caveat is that by so doing you do not undermine the faith of someone else. It's about self-giving care and concern for someone else. At the same time, there were those, who came to be known as "Judaizers," who persisted in the belief that male Gentile converts needed to be circumcised and that all Gentile converts needed to obey the Torah (See Galatians).
Towards the end of his Letter to the Galatians, Paul exhorts these Christians:
For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another (Galatians 5:13-15)Another case-in-point of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (i.e., the more things change, the more they stay the same).
The Holy Spirit reminds us, again, in these readings, of what Jesus asked us, as his followers, to observe.
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