When he had left, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.” [v.31]
Judas
now gone it is as if the darkness left as well and Jesus is free to pour out a
flow of words as a living stream of His love for His Apostles – and all of us.
Now Jesus is among friends, yes friends with all their neediness and foibles,
the difficulty in taking into to their own hearts the fullness of His love and
teachings, a difficulty which will be burned away by the fire of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost.
……..
only he can be a friend of God who knows God, and this is possible only through
Christ His Son.
[1]
It was
said of St. Abba Anthony that he was such a friend of God that: “Where Anthony
is, God is.”
If God
is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him
immediately. [v.32]
We
should stand before these words as awestruck as Moses before the burning bush;
hear them with the exhilarated hearts of the Shepherds and Magi kneeling,
bending to look into the manger and see glory Himself in the flesh; being as
attentive as the Emmaus Disciples to every syllable and feel the fire of glory
as our hearts burn within us.
Jesus
is teaching us here both the reality of what transpires on the Cross, what
shines and shimmers to the furthest reaches of the cosmos, penetrating ever
human heart.
We tend
to use the word glory within the constraints of the limits of human experience,
thus when surprised we might mutter a glory be to God!; react to a splendid
dawn or sunset naming as glorious, even perhaps experience a tremor of joy at
such a sight. Every human enunciation of the word, and all its many synonyms,
pales before the incredible reality Jesus speaks here to us.
The son
ineffably glorified the Father by the humility of his passion, and the Father
also ineffably glorified his Son by lifting him to his right hand. The
glorification flowed down to the whole human race. [2]
If we
wish to glimpse the glory of which Jesus speaks, if we wish to understand the
dynamic movement between the Father and the Son, we need to encounter Jesus,
true God, and true man, indeed go walking until we meet Him who is always
coming towards us: A man came walking
out of Galilee, and his eyes were so clear that if anyone let his look in, it
healed the heart and showed forth the glory of the Kingdom shining, within and
without, even more simply than the everyday sun. So much clarity, too much for
some, and they tried to stuff his light back into the black hole of death. But
might as well pour the Milky Way into a bag: on the third day the Master came
forth from the darkness as calmly as he had from Galilee, changing the darkness
itself into the brightness of the day without end. Now his eyes could reach to
the end of time and space to lift the veil from every heart and to give to all
creatures the glorious revelation of the children of God. I look toward him,
toward Jesus, my Master, and I behold his glory, and I see all my days pass into
his eyes so that I too may “be changed into his likeness from glory to glory”
(2 Cor. 3:18) [3]
My
children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for Me,
and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you. [v.33]
Jesus
is revealing His profound love for His Apostles by referring to them as His
children revealing how intimate His love for them is. Further there are echoes
in those words of the pain in His Heart, for love and pain are inseparable. In
the unfolding of the Last Supper, they still are clueless about what is to
happen to Jesus or rather what Jesus is about to surrender Himself to.
Later,
after His Holy Resurrection He will be with them anew and then, after His
Ascension, with them, with us, always as by the sanctifying action of the Holy
Spirit we will live lives in imitation of Christ, for some to martyrdom, for
everyone to the tomb until He raises us to be with Him, the Father, the Holy
Spirit for ever in an eternity of communion of love.
I give
you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also
should love one another. This is how all will know that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another. [vs. 34,35]
How do
I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and
height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and
ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and
candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely,
as they turn from Praise. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If only
living out the Great Commandment was as romantic as Elizabeth’s love for her
husband, granted a relationship which, like many marriages, had its struggles.
In a word if only the Great Commandment could be lived out by loving those we
like, or who like us.
Such is
not the case. Indeed, it could be argued of all the God-given Ten Commandments
in the Old Testament, and all Jesus’ exhortations for us to forgive our
enemies, care for Him in the hungry, the stranger etc., this is the no wiggle
room, no exceptions commandment because of the four key words: As I have
loved you……
St.
Paul gives the authentic Trinitarian love-poem: For this reason I kneel
before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that
He may grant you in accord with the riches of His glory to be strengthened with
power through His Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength
to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height
and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you
may be filled with all the fullness of God. [Ep. 3:14-19] Jesus, the Father
and the Holy Spirit, love us infinitely unconditionally precisely in this and
every moment of our lives, be we entangled in negative emotions, doubts,
struggles, sins, sickness, loneliness, heartache: whatever state we are in we
are beloved, irrespective also of any of the judgemental criteria of others
which burden us with a lack of self love.
The
Commandment to love one another as Christ loves us is so overflowing with the
fire of His love for us we are bathed in the light and strength to live it out.
Such love has nothing to do with emotion, everything to do with choice; nothing
to do with how I feel, what kind of day I am having, what space I occupy – even
people in labour camps, concentration camps, refugee camps, criminals in
prison, etc., etc., each of us can choose to love or not.
This is
the very choice Jesus made as He became a person like us in all things but sin,
while heading directly from the womb of His Mother to the Cross and the Tomb,
because Divine Love does such things. We are also called to love, love, love,
without counting the cost.
Is our
divine worship not a matter of loving people in our daily life?.......Can there
be any other holy time than the time for practicing love of neighbour, whenever
and wherever the circumstances of our life demand it?.......Christ’s Sacrifice
was accepted long ago. True, but in the form of representation it has not come
to an end……..This Sacrifice is complete only when the world has become a place
of love……Only then…..is worship perfected and what happened on Golgotha
completed. [4]
[1] THE
LORD, Romano Guardini; p. 356; Henry Regnery Company, 1954 [italics are mine]
[2]
ROBERT BELLARMINE Spiritual Writings; The Mind’s Ascent To God; p.193; Paulist
Press, 1989 [italics are mine]
[3]
CIRCLING THE SUN, MEDITATIONS ON CHRIST IN LITURGY AND TIME, Robert D. Pelton,
p.189; The Pastoral Press, 1986 [out of print/italics are mine]
[4]
JOSEPH RATZINGER COLLECTED WORKS THEOLOGY OF THE LITURGY; pp. 31 & 34,35;
Ignatius Press, 2014 [italics are mine]
© 2021
Fr. Arthur Joseph