Sixth Sunday of Easter B

Jesus said: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.  

· The Father loves Jesus and Jesus in turn loves us. We express our love for Jesus through obedience to his word. In loving Jesus we are loving the Father and the Spirit.  Do we easily relate obedience to love or to obligation? The key to true obedience is love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

· Everyone is looking for happiness. Jesus says that when we love as Jesus calls us to we will experience a joy that no one can take away. Have we experienced this at anytime in the past or present?

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. 

· Notice Jesus identifies love with sacrifice for the other: sacrifice of one’s life for the other. Is our love sacrificial? Are we saying that I am willing to sacrifice myself, my desires and needs for the other, when we say “I love you?”

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

· From Jesus’ point of view we are first his friends by his choice; from his point of view also we respond to his gift of friendship by loving obedience.  Our obedience doesn’t make us his friends; it acknowledges that we are honor to be his friends and accept his friendship.

 It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.” 

· What is the fruit Jesus is talking about? Could it be the witness of our love to others? As the Father sees this fruit in us he sees the reflection of Jesus in us.

· As you reread this passage what is Jesus saying directly to you?