TODAY'S GOSPEL PICKS UP from last week where Jesus spoke about his relationship with us and with his Father in the image of a vine plant.

Today he spells out the meaning of the parable-allegory explicitly in terms of love. As the branches of the vine draw their nourishment from their union with the trunk which in turn draws its nourishment from the care of the vine-dresser, so we experience love which comes from its original source, our God, through Jesus our Lord.

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Keeping Jesus' commandments

And how are we to maintain this relationship of mutual loving? "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." We should not think that Jesus is here speaking of the 10 commandments. If we look at them closely, we can see that they can actually be observed without our having a shred of real love. Many of them are expressed in negative terms so that we can technically observe them by doing absolutely nothing - not murdering, not committing adultery, not stealing...!

Jesus obviously expects a lot more than that. Following Jesus involves a great deal more than being free from sin.

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Love one another

The commandments - in fact, the one commandment - of Jesus is very clear: "This is my commandment: Love one another as I have loved you." This is somewhat different from the other commandment to love God with one's whole heart and soul and to love one's neighbour as one loves oneself.

Here we are given a concrete, visible and tangible model of love and that model is Jesus. We can also note that in this commandment there (surprisingly?) is no mention whatever of God. The meaning is clear: there can be no love of God which does not include love of every brother and sister and, at the same time, all genuine love of a brother or sister is ultimately directed towards God - "as often as you do it to the least of these my brothers and sisters you do it to me".

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Inseparable

We cannot say we love God, if we do not love the neighbour; but in every genuine act of love towards the neighbour we are loving God. So we have the paradoxical situation that where there is a denial of faith in God there will be no real love or caring for others. On the other hand, where there is genuine caring on a practical level for others, it is hard not to be led to faith in God.

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Just love

This is put very well in the Second Reading today. It is a very extraordinary statement if we listen to it very carefully. "Let us love one another," we are told, "since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love."

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Love is all you need

The purpose or goal of loving is not mentioned. Simply to be a loving person - no mention of faith or religion - is to have come from God and to know God. And the reason? Because God IS love. Wherever then there is love, anywhere at all in the world, God is there. And not only is he there but to some extent he is also known (whatever name we use). And wherever or whenever any person really loves, God is operating through that person.

In a world where religion is often not part of people's lives this is an important truth to remember. For who can dare to say that only in Christians does one find loving people? And who can dare to say that all Christians are loving?

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Proof of love

Jesus goes on to spell the particular quality of the love in himself which he wishes us to imitate: "A person can have no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." These are not just nice words on Jesus' part; he will put them dramatically into practice with his suffering and death on the cross. And that was just hours away as he spoke.

And that love he showed was for people he regards as friends. We are not just servants, slaves of Jesus - or of God for that matter. There is a two-way bond of friendship. A bond which is sealed by the mutual love between him and us. "You are my friends, if you do what I command you." It is a statement of the Christian Covenant.

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No favourites

And, as the First Reading today makes clear, any person is eligible to enjoy that friendship.

Peter had been unwilling at first to accept the pagan Gentile Cornelius into the Christian community until he realised that God's love and the power of the Spirit could be manifested just as clearly in a Gentile as in a Jew. It was a turning point in the development of the new Christian community which, up to that, had been confined only to Jews.

"The truth I have now come to realise," Peter tells Cornelius, "is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him." This was a very important insight in the development of the new community. God's people would no longer be limited to one ethnic group.

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No longer servants

And we are no longer servants because we have been brought into the inner circle of Jesus' "business". "I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father." That does not mean, of course, that we understand everything we have been told. The task of absorbing and assimilating all that we have heard from Jesus is something that the Church in 2,000 years of existence has not yet exhausted. Still less is it true of each one of us.

Nevertheless, we have been gifted by being let inside the 'mystery' of God. We have been blessed with an awareness of the unutterable love of our God for us expressed for us by the life of Jesus.

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God's debtors

Lastly, Jesus reminds us of something extremely important. Namely, that we are forever in his debt; he is never in ours. It is easy for us sometimes to think that God or Jesus should be grateful for the love and attention we give him when compared with the large number of people who ignore him completely.

There can easily be in us a little of that Pharisee who prayed in the temple and boasted of how much he did for God and that he was not like other sinful people. "You did not choose me, no, I chose you," Jesus reminds us today.

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Doing our duty

All that we do for God and for Jesus is only a response to the love and call that has first come from him. In the words of the Gospel, "we are unprofitable servants" simply doing our duty.

Again the Second Reading puts this in a striking way. God's love, not ours, comes first. "God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him." And the author goes on, "This is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away."

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Love passed on

And to what end have we been chosen and blessed with this love? "I commissioned you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last." We do not simply lie back and bask in the knowledge that we, in God's inscrutable ways, have been chosen by him. We have been chosen for a purpose.

The love of God which is poured into hearts must also pour through us and be experienced by the people we come in contact with. Otherwise, we are, as last Sunday's Gospel told us, useless branches, only fit to be lopped off and thrown into the fire.

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The guaranteed prayer

If are truly fruit-bearing branches, "then the Father will give you anything you ask him in my name". That is not, as we have said last week, a blank cheque demanding that God satisfy our every whim. Rather it is linked with our deep desire to be united with God and Christ in love.

With such a desire, we will only be interested in asking for those things which bring us into a closer relationship with our Creator, from whom we have come and with whom we are called to be forever united.