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The One Who Loves Me

Does Jesus teach that we have to obey his commandments before he can love us?

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

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.”

-John 14:15-21


These words of Our Lord are among the most profound, if not the most profound, in all of Sacred Scripture. Their meaning is clear enough, it seems, yet they are still easy to misunderstand.

The key to understanding the work of God in our souls is perhaps very different from what we might normally think of as a rule of the spiritual life. And yet this key is the same at every stage of our spiritual life—from our first reception of grace, our conversion, our subsequent deeper conversions, all the way up to the heights of the life of prayer to the mystical life lived by God’s saints, meant in some measure for all of us who have been baptized into the life of the Holy Trinity.

The key is this: our spiritual life from beginning to end, and indeed into the life to come, is the work of God. He moves us in every way that bears on our salvation and sanctification; his grace precedes, accompanies, and perfects all of it.

Love, the divine life of charity poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, is a pure gift of God. That we love God cannot be the result of our own doing. The apostle tells us this when he says that love consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us first.

And yet we read, “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.”

It would be easy to read this as meaning that if we first observe God’s commandments and thereby prove we love him, then the Father will love us and so will the Son, and he will reveal himself to us. So we will be loved by God and know him if we keep his commandments, right? Not quite.

The ability to keep God’s commandments is also and most especially God’s gift of love. So, it is far truer and clearer to say that God gives us his love in Christ, and so we love him, and loving him keep his commandments.

This is the truth of the words spoken right before “I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” The Son lives in the Father through love and he lives in us and we in him through love.  The observance of the commandments is simply the outward sign of the live of Love of the Trinity deep within. The observance of the commandments does not obtain God’s love for us, it expresses it!

What Father would say to his children, “Do as I say and I then will love you.”? No, he loves them, and they, aware of this, do as he asks. There is no law of morality, especially not the fourth commandment, that is not an application of the New Commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Now, none of this takes away the need for correction and punishment and the expression of displeasure, but God’s displeasure if we do not keep his commandments is a loving gift moving us away from false love of self and creatures to his love which he alone gives and governs. Just so, a Father must sometimes be strict precisely because he loves his children. His children have a great need to perceive that he loves them even when he says “No!” Then they will be secure in the love they already possess.

The One who dwells in us lovingly along with his Father is also the one who felt abandoned by the Father. He knew at the height of his human understanding that he had not been, but feeling abandoned is pain enough, and the knowledge was no human consolation at the time.

Christ’s Passion was an undergoing infinitely more than it was a doing. He accepted the work of the Holy Trinity in his sacred humanity drawing the world, drawing sinners to himself by his being lifted up. The force of the gravity of his love is what makes it possible for us to keep his commandments—nothing else.

What about human “cooperation” with this drawing of grace? That is also a gift. Somehow, many of us want to find a way to make it absolutely necessary that we do something to deserve God’s love. But the only way to deserve his love is to receive it as a gift, absolutely free. Persevering in this love is our work, if that is what you want, but as the saints teach us, and first among them St. Thomas Aquinas, the grace of final perseverance all the way to the instant of death is a sheer grace and can only be gained by prayer.

As the theologians say, “The principle of merit is not merited.” To be able to be pleasing to God is to possess his Love and that is his free gift, for that all we can do is ask. Then as he gives it to us freely we run, or walk, or stumble along the way of his commandments, trusting in his gift of divine charity. Let us trust utterly so loving a Lord.

(P.S. And by the way, if this sounds Protestant, it’s not. The only problem is that many Catholics do not keep in mind Our Lord’s words in the Holy Gospel.)

(P.P.S. As for final perseverance, nothing is better than the Hail Mary in which we pray for this grace over and over again “now and at the hour of our death.” Amen!)

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