Jesus said to his disciples: “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. I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.” John 15: 9-11
Today’s gospel is short, but very beautiful.
We’ve heard all our lives that Jesus loves us. Each one of us instinctively longs to know Jesus more deeply in prayer and through the sacraments, and to feel his love for us more profoundly than what we do right now. There are a lot of people who believe that just because they can not feel Jesus’s tender, warm feelings of love for them, that he must not love them at all. If they can’t feel his love, then he doesn’t care about them. But, this just isn’t the case at all. In fact, Jesus is often the closest to us, the further away that we feel from him. Sometimes it might even be a test to see if we truly love the Lord Jesus, or just his consolations. We need to love the giver of this gift, more than the gift itself though.
It is a pretty well known fact that Mother Teresa often could not feel Jesus’ presence in her life. He seemed distant at times and his consolations were absent. This is often referred to as the dark night of the soul in people of advanced spiritual development. To love Jesus, without any consolations at all, is to love Him for Himself. Mother Teresa made a conscious decision to love Jesus without receiving any spiritual reward of his consolations in return. This was a beautiful gift.
Love is a choice, not a feeling.
This is worth repeating many times over, that love is a choice and not a feeling. Jesus says pretty much the same thing in today’s gospel. “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.” What we do matters more than what we feel. If we say we love Jesus, but don’t go to Mass, then our actions do not match our feelings. Also, how many times have we watched a sentimental movie and cried about it, even though we knew it wasn’t real? Or got scared watching a scary movie? We know good and well that the movie wasn’t real, and yet our feelings are so profound. Feelings do not always portray the truth. Our actions portray the truth of what we believe, so much more than our words and feelings.
Jesus said, “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”
Just the words “the commandments” often conjure up thoughts of rules, restrictions and things that try to take away our fun and happiness. But, the commandments are actually a road map to learning how to love more deeply and avoid the pitfalls in life that can rob us of our joy.
We often sacrifice joy for pleasure, a little too easily in our modern life. What’s more fun? Surfing the internet, listening to music, watching television, or – praying? Hopefully, everyone who is reading these words today, finds a deeper joy in their lives, in proportion to the amount of time they spend praying. The residual feelings of pleasure disappear shortly after we turn off the television set or the computer, but the graces we receive from prayer stick with us every day.
Jesus Christ is our true source of joy, not the temporary pleasures of the world. The temporary pleasures of the world are often just a distraction from joy. Our sins though, are the main way we are distracted from joy. That’s why Christ warns us to obey the commandments because he genuinely does have our well being in mind. Jesus doesn’t have any ulterior motives about our lives, other than to wish us a happy life and for us to be with him in the next.
How do we find this joy that Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel though? Of course we should obey the commandments and frequent the sacraments. But, the genuine way to find joy in our hearts, a purpose for living, and a deep down sense of being loved, of peace and well being is to spend quality time in prayer. Not minutes a day, but maybe a half hour to one hour a day. Prayer opens the door of the heart to grace. If our hearts are filled with “other things” there is no room left in our hearts for grace.
Maybe we shouldn’t pride ourselves so much on how many things we get done each day, but on how many things we didn’t do so we have more time for prayer. It’s surprising how much smoother our lives go, how much happier we are, with less stress and more peace, when we take time out of our busy lives to spend with Jesus in prayer. The peace, joy and happiness is so profound that we really won’t desire other things like television, or other secular pleasures as much. There really is no substitute for the love of Jesus Christ and the graces that he sends to those he loves.
Daily Mass Readings:
Acts 15: 7-21 / Psalm 96: 1-3, 10 / John 15: 9-11
