What binds the disciples to Jesus is love. Love is the condition for assuming and living its own commandments (cf. Jn 14:15). There is therefore a close link between love and observance of the commandments. But can love be regulated by a commandment? Isn’t that a contradiction? Those who love want to be pleasing to the loved one and conform to him or her (while maintaining your own originality). For this process, that we could define as identification, the commandments lose the character of imposition, they become needs of love. Therefore the disciples are not invited to observe external norms but to expand their inner harmony with Jesus. The love of which Jesus speaks to us then has two characteristics: reciprocity and knowledge (cf. Jn 14:21). Reciprocal is love that not only knows how to give but also receive, by bringing the beloved and the lover to an intimate, deep and unique knowledge. Jesus also promises a return: “I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you” (Jn 14:18). By this promise, as noted exegete Raymond Brown observes, Christ ensures a permanent presence in our Community: «If originally these verses referred to the return of Jesus in a series of apparitions after the resurrection, they were soon reinterpreted in Johannine circles as referring to a more lasting and non-corporeal presence of Jesus after the resurrection”. However, the fullness will be in the Parousia. In this expectation, between the already and the not yet, the Christian community cries: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22.20). This expectation, founded on love, as we have mentioned, and animated by the action of the Spirit, urges the community to gather on the day of the Lord to celebrate the divine mysteries. Indeed, the Eucharist is
always celebrated donec veniat or so that the Lord may come and in the certainty that he will come. Also for this the martyrs of Abitene, headed by Emeritus, exclaimed when faced with the ban on celebrating the Eucharist: “Sine dominico non possumus!”, that is: “We cannot live without the Lord’s Supper”.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Santa Maria – Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey