“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete” (John 15:11).
What is this referring too? “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.”
And what is his commandment? “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”
Even when life appears pretty dark and division and suffering seem to be waiting around every corner, we need not give up or fall into despair. God wants us to experience fulfillment, meaning, and joy despite our experiences and not through being lemmings or slaves but as Jesus said, his “friends”. The friends of Jesus are those who hear the word he has received and shared from his Father which are his commandments, the greatest of these is the commandment to love as Jesus and the Father have loved us.
If we truly want to be happy, fulfilled, if we want to heal, experience a path to wholeness and the glory we have been created for, and have meaning in our lives, Jesus invites us to align our wills with the will of God who is Love. St. Irenaeus taught that the joy of God is the human being fully alive. For us to be fully alive, not just surviving and existing, we need to allow ourselves to be loved by and then love as God loves us.
God knows what will fulfill us, give us meaning, and great joy. Many of us do not experience the fullness of this joy because we are distracted and diverted by apparent goods, instead of striving for what actually is good. Time and discernment with the guidance of the Holy Spirit can help us to distinguish the difference. Spending quiet time with God in his word and just being still with him, will also help us to experience God and his love. Once we do, the things of this world will have less of a draw.
A false path to fulfillment and joy is denying, covering over, or being so busy that we don’t face the sufferings or conflicts in our lives. We experience healing when we are willing to experience our pain, breathe into that reality, identify its cause, and offer our suffering to Jesus. Jesus receives what we have shared and offers us his mercy and love, and experience healing at the root. As we allow God into those places of pain and sin, as we experience God’s love, in allowing ourselves to be loved in places we would rather not go ourselves, we find clarity and healing. As we heal, we can help to alleviate some of the sufferings of those around us.
“To love as God does, we must be constantly dying to our own sinfulness and selfishness and living for God. And we live for God by obeying the Father’s will and loving one another” (Martin and Wright, 260). Each day we are invited to choose to curl up in our shell of selfish concern or allow ourselves to be loved and to love in return, to come out of our shell, to risk, and become agents of healing and love. As agents of God’s love and mercy we can help to make our corner of the world a little better.
Photo: The light of Jesus leads us through the darkness to healing, fulfillment, and newness of life.
Martin, Francis and Wright IV, William M. The Gospel of John. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015.
Spiritual Stepping Stones 