Abide in Christ’s Love

To abide in Christ’s love is to abide in the shade of the Cross.

Reading: John 15:9-11

The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” [Jn 15:9]

What does it mean to abide in Christ’s love? Perhaps we can begin by saying what it is not. This ‘abiding’ cannot mean a purely passive state of rest. A relationship cannot be sustained by pure passivity – not our human relationships, nor our relationship with God. Because we are dynamic creatures, our loves and our relationships do not stagnate. Either the love in a relationship is being fed and nourished, and so it is growing; or it is being neglected, and is malnourished, and so it is diminishing.

So it is in our relationship with God, not because God somehow changes, or forgets us – after all, He says, “I will not for get you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands” [Is 49:15-16]. Rather, it is because we change, we forget, we are the ones who become callous to God’s love.

Christ tells us that this ‘abiding’ is meant to be something active on our part – “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” [Jn 15:10]. And what is Christ’s commandments? To love God, and to love one another as Christ has loved us. We abide in Christ’s love when we ourselves exercise our power to love.

I think it is helpful to turn to an image given to us in the Song of Songs:

“As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” [Song 2:3]

An apple tree is not a particularly impressive tree – it is not the tallest, nor does it have the prettiest flowers, nor does it stand our very much in a garden full of trees. But neither is the tree of the Cross – at first glance, the Cross is ugly, unappealing, horrifying. There are many other trees in this garden of earthly delights which seem more delightful than the Cross. But seen in the light of Christ my Beloved, the Cross is supremely beautiful, it is the Tree of Life, stretching higher than any other tree to connect heaven and earth.

I would like to suggest that to abide in Christ’s love is to sit in the shadow of the Cross, this new Tree of Life; to eat of its fruit at the Eucharistic feast, that we may taste and see that the Lord is good [Ps 34:8]. For it is at the Cross that I am fed and nourished by Christ’s flesh and blood, obeying His commandment to eat His flesh and drink His blood.

It is at the Cross that I learn how to love God, for here I see clearly how God, in His great love for me, as graven me on the palms of his hands. It is here that I learn to trust that God is really good for me; that I learn to let go of the vices to which I stubbornly cling on to make me happy. Here, I can let go of them, and instead cling to the Cross with my Beloved.

And it is here that I begin to learn how to love my neighbour. For if Eve, having tasted of the forbidden fruit, could not help but share it with Adam, how much more should tasting the fruit of the Tree of Life move me to share it with others?

Abide in Christ’s love. Abide in the greatest act of love this world has ever seen. Abide at Calvary.

Image: ‘The Tree of Life’ – mosaic in the apse of the Basilica of San Clemente, Rome. Photographed by Fr Lawrence Lew OP.