Gospel
Jn 14:15-21

Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows him.
But you know him, because he remains with you,
and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

Reflections

There’s a beautiful scene in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Tyvye keeps nagging his wife, Golda, by asking “Do you love me?” She says, “Look at this man…Look at you…I am your wife, I cook you meals, wash your clothes, milk the cows, raise half a dozen daughters for you, my bed is yours, my time is yours, everything I have and am, I share with you – after all that, you want to know whether I love you? Oh well, I guess I do…”

Jesus, in the gospel reading today, tells us: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” St. Ignatius follows up this point when he said, “Love is shown more by deeds than by words.”

In today’s gospel, Christ teaches us that what’s crucial is not just possessing the commandments but keeping them. “Anyone who receives my commandments and keeps them will be one who loves me” (Jn 14, 23).

The message that Jesus want to convey to us is: The “doing” is the hitch. We may be able to know by heart the Lord’s commands but if we fail to live them, then they are nothing but empty words. For Christianity is not primarily a thing to be known, but to be done. We must “do” the truth that we know.