Everything Jesus did or said, he did so out of obedience to the One who sent him: the Father. Jesus was not a God unto himself, but the “Son” in relation to the Source, the beginning, of everything, the One he called “Father.” Jesus was in a continual state of “listening” to the will of the Father. And it is the “Spirit” that binds both Son and Father in Love. God us LOVE because, and only because, God is a relationship of persons forming ONE Community of LOVE.
Love can’t exist but in relation to another. This “other” can only be another person, not a thing or an object. We love and are loved in return; we are loved and we live in return. Jesus and the Father are bound in the Spirit in Love. God is absolute Love and all that is created, especially humanity, is created in this Love, the absolute ground of all that exists.
In the gospel today, and in the gospel readings leading up to the greatest Feast of all, Jesus speaks of his relationship with the Father. We are called, always called, to live WITHIN this relationship through the Spirit, so that every beat of our hearts is sustained by this Reality called God who is only Love. We have to pray through this in the days to come if we are to stand beneath the Cross with Mary, who represents the spiritual Motherhood of God, and gaze up at the great “I Am.”
We can never understand the meaning of the Passion, the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, we will never understand why he came into existence, preached, healed, forgave, suffered unless we enter into this relationship of the Son and the Father, bound by the Spirit in Love.
As you pray, enter INTO this community of Love. This prayer will ALWAYS lead you out of yourself and ego and into the Love that brought you into being and will abandon you.
Peace,
Fr. Frank