You can find the first reading for this Sunday here https://biblestudystjosephsparis.wordpress.com/2021/05/07/1st-reading-6th-sunday-of-easter-year-b-acts-1025-26-34-35-44-48/
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
This passage follows immediately after last week’s gospel in which Jesus said that he is the true vine. It begins with Jesus announcing that the source of his love for the disciples is the love the Father has for Jesus. The Father is the source of all love and this love unites him and the Son, the Sender and the Sent. Jesus then insists that the disciples must become part of this unity by remaining, by abiding in this love. In the next verse we learn how to do this: by following his commands. Jesus has lived a life of loving unity with the Father which he showed by doing the Father’s will, even to giving up his own life. True disciples repeat this pattern in their relationship with the Father and with each other. Jesus then explains that doing this will lead to great joy. By keeping God’s commandments, we become part of the great chain of love.
In the next verses Jesus develops this idea more. We are to commit to loving God and others throughout our life and the measure of this love is Jesus’ supreme act of self-sacrifice. This is the model for all Christian love and it is certainly not an easy one. Jesus loves without any limit, giving up his life for obtuse disciples who argue over petty things. One of these betrayed him while another denied him and the rest fled. However, none of these failures will be held against them.
In verses 14-15, Jesus tells the disciples that he does not consider them his servants but his friends. They have been drawn into a new relationship with God as close and equal associates with Jesus. In verse 16, Jesus goes on to say that “You did not choose me but I chose you”. The initiative always lies with Jesus and there is a mystery about who he chooses and why. Notice that here the language returns to that of last week’s gospel about the true vine. Jesus tells the disciples that, as they bear fruit, they will receive all they ask for. The unity between the Father and the Son will include the disciples. We are called to be children of God in the same way that Jesus is. But to achieve this goal, we must first follow Jesus’ command and love each other. Richard Burridge sums it up well: “Thus Jesus’ disciples are his ‘beloved’, loved by him as he is by his Father and he wants them to be a community of love, loving each other. This is not in order to be an introverted, cosy church but so that we might ‘go and bear fruit that will last’, reaching out in love to the world around us”
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