“Thou and Thy Mother are the only ones who are perfectly beautiful in every respect; for there is no spot in Thee, O Lord, nor any taint in Thy Mother”
– St Ephrem, the Syrian
John 15:9-11
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
What do the Fathers say?
St AUGUSTINE. Who doubts that love precedes the observance of the commandments? For who loves not, has not that whereby to keep the commandments.
Your keeping of My commandments, will be evidence to you that you abide in My love. It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that He then loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments.
This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud.
St John CHRYSOSTOM. If then I love you, be of good cheer; if it is the Father’s glory that you bring forth good fruit, bear no evil.
Then to rouse them to exertion, He adds, Abide in My love; and then shows how this is to be done: If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love.
And then because the Passion was now approaching to interrupt their joy, He adds, These things have I spoken to you, that my joy may be in you: as if He said, And if sorrow fall upon you, I will take it away; so that you shall rejoice in the end.
St AUGUSTINE. And what is our joy, which He says shall be full? It began to be in us, when He called us And we rightly call it our own. This joy with which we shall be blessed; which is begun in the faith of them who are born again, and shall be fulfilled in the reward of them who rise again.
Sources:
Bible readings from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Second Catholic Edition, copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Quotes of the Fathers from Thomas Aquinas’ Catena Aurea Translated by St John Henry Newman
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