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John 15:12–17
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another.
Cited in the Catechism: In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, St. John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium." He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 363, 434, 459, 609, 614, 737, 1970, 1972, 2074, 2347, 2615, 2745 and 2815.
Commentary
15:12–15. Jesus insists on the “new commandment”, which he himself keeps by giving his life for us. See the note on Jn 13:34–35.
[NOTE on Jn 13:34-35
13:34–35. After announcing that he is leaving them (v. 33). Christ summarizes his commandments in one—the New Commandment. He will repeat it a number of times during the discourse of the Supper (cf. Jn 15:12, 17), and St John in his First Letter will insist on the need to practise this commandment of the Lord and on the demands it implies (cf. 1 Jn 2:8; 3:7–21).
Love of neighbour was already commanded in the Old Testament (cf. Lev 19:18)—and Jesus ratified this when he specified that it was the second precept of the whole Law and similar to the first: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind (cf. Mt 22:37–40). But Jesus gives the precept of brotherly love new meaning and content by saying “even as I have loved you”.
The love of neighbour called for by the Old Law did also in some way extend to one’s enemies (Ex 23:4–5); however, the love which Jesus preaches is much more demanding and includes returning good for evil (cf. Mt 5:43–44), because Christian love is measured not by man’s heart but by the heart of Christ, who gives up his life on the cross to redeem all men (cf. 1 Jn 4:9–11). Here lies the novelty of Jesus’ teaching, and our Lord can rightly say that it is his commandment, the principal clause of his last will and testament. Love of neighbour cannot be separated from love of God: “The greatest commandment of the law is to love God with one’s whole heart and one’s neighbour as oneself (cf. Mt 22:37–40). Christ has made this love of neighbour his personal commandment and has enriched it with a new meaning when he willed himself, along with his brothers, to be the object of this charity, saying: ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Mt 25:40). In assuming human nature he has united to himself all humanity in a supernatural solidarity which makes of it one single family. He has made charity the distinguishing mark of his disciples, in the words: ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ ” (Vatican II, Apostolicam actuositatem, 8).
Even though Christ is purity itself, and temperance and humility, he does not, however, make any one of these virtues the distinguishing mark of his disciples: he makes charity that mark. “The Master’s message and example are clear and precise. He confirmed his teaching with deeds. Yet I have often thought that, after twenty centuries, it is still a new commandment, for very few people have taken the trouble to practise it. The others, the majority of men, both in the past and still today, have chosen to ignore it. Their selfishness has led them to the conclusion: ‘Why should I complicate my life? I have more than enough to do just looking after myself.’
“Such an attitude is not good enough for us Christians. If we profess the same faith and are really eager to follow in the clear footprints left by Christ when he walked on this earth, we cannot be content merely with avoiding doing unto others the evil that we would not have them do unto us. That is a lot, but it is still very little when we consider that our love is to be measured in terms of Jesus’ own conduct. Besides, he does not give us this standard as a distant target, as a crowning point of a whole lifetime of struggle. It is—it ought to be, I repeat, so that you may turn it into specific resolutions—our starting point, for our Lord presents it as a sign of Christianity: ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples’ ” (St Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, 223).
And this is what in fact happened among Christians in the early centuries in the midst of pagan society, so much so that Tertuallian, writing around the end of the second century, reported that people could indeed say, looking at the way these Christians lived: “See how they love one another” (Apologeticum, 39).
Christ’s friendship with the Christian, which our Lord expresses in a very special way in this passage, is something very evident in St Josemaría Escrivá’s preaching: “The life of the Christian who decides to behave in accordance with the greatness of his vocation is so to speak a prolonged echo of those words of our Lord, ‘No longer do I call you my servants; a servant is one who does not understand what his master is about, whereas I have made known to you all that my Father has told me; and so I have called you my friends’ (Jn 15:15). When we decide to be docile and follow the will of God, hitherto unimagined horizons open up before us […]. There is nothing better than, recognizing that Love has made us slaves of God. From the moment we recognize this we cease being slaves and become friends, sons” (St Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, 35].
“Sons of God, Friends of God. […] Jesus Christ is truly God and truly Man, he is our Brother and our Friend. If we make an effort to get to know him well, ‘we will share in the joy of being God’s friends’ [ibid., 300]. If we do all we can to keep him company, from Bethlehem to Calvary, sharing his joys and sufferings, we will become worthy of entering into loving conversation with him. As the Liturgy of the Hours sings, calicem Domini biberunt, et amici Dei facti sunt, they drank the chalice of the Lord and so became friends of God.
“Being his children and being his friends are two inseparable realities for those who love God. We go to him as children, carrying on a trusting dialogue that should fill the whole of our lives; and we go to him as friends. […] In the same way our divine sonship urges us to translate the overflow of our interior life into apostolic activity, just as our friendship with God leads us to place ourselves at ‘the service of all men. We are called to use the gifts God has given us as instruments to help others discover Christ’ [ibid., 258]” (Monsignor A. del Portillo in the foreword to Escrivá, Friends of God).]
15:16. There are three ideas contained in these words of our Lord. One, that the calling which the apostles received and which every Christian also receives does not originate in the individual’s good desires but in Christ’s free choice. It was not the apostles who chose the Lord as Master, in the way someone would go about choosing a rabbi: it was Christ who chose them. The second idea is that the apostles’ mission and the mission of every Christian is to follow Christ, to seek holiness and contribute to the spread of the Gospel. The third teaching refers to the effectiveness of prayer done in the name of Christ; which is why the Church usually ends the prayers of the liturgy with the invocation “Through Jesus Christ our Lord …”.
The three ideas are all interconnected: prayer is necessary if the Christian life is to prove fruitful, for it is “God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7); and the obligation to seek holiness and to be apostolic derives from the fact that it is Christ himself who has given us this mission. “Bear in mind, son, that you are not just a soul who has joined other souls in order to do a good thing. That is a lot, but it’s still little. You are the apostle who is carrying out an imperative command from Christ” (St Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, 941–942).
Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome
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