Jn 15:9-17
[Jesus said to his disciples,] 9“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
11“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. 12This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. 16It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. 17This I command you: love one another.”
REMAIN IN MY LOVE. It is easy to fall in and out of love. We can “love” almost anything—from a pet to a person, from work to leisure, from food to shopping. The real challenge, however, is how to remain in love, to be committed, to be faithful to the loved one.
We will be remembered, not for what we have fallen in love with, but for how faithful we have remained in our love!
When I celebrated the tenth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, I wrote a classmate down south, “We have been faithful all these years!”
My classmate, also a priest, wrote back, “No, Rau, I know you and you know me. We have not always been faithful. We have sinned and doubted. We have reached ten years not because we have been faithful to God but because God has been faithful to us!”