Thursday of 5th Week of Easter

We’ve been hearing a lot in the past few days from this farewell discourse of Christ in the Gospel of John. Because we’ve been hearing it so much, I think it’s easy for us to forget how vital these passages from Scripture are, for they reveal to us the inner mystery of God’s own life, and they offer us ways to share in that life.

What do we see in our Gospel today?

The Father’s love for the Son, the Son’s love for us.

The Son’s obedience to the Father, our obedience to Christ

Christ’s obedience is his human response to the Father’s love, and so our obedience ought to be a response to Christ’s love.

What does this obedience look like? Just as our love is an imitation of Christ’s love, so too our obedience ought to be an imitation of Christ’s obedience.

Never acted alone

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise.” John 5:19

Acted in communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit

The Son did not come to do his will but the will of the Father

“Father, if you are willing, remove this chalice from me; nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done.” Luke 22:42

The Cross

“And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:8

He offered everything in sacrificial obedience to the Father for our sake.

Obedience is an essential part of any Christian life. The earliest monks in the desert cherished obedience above all other practices, because it allowed them to imitate Christ and it gave them a surefire way of avoiding pride.

To act out of obedience does not leave a crack open for pride to slither in and infect our actions.

How do we imitate Christ’s obedience?

Community

Just as Christ never acted alone, we must always act in conjunction with others or act for the sake of others.

In doing so, we can ensure that we are not acting out of pride, but that all our actions are fueled by a desire for the good of others.

Obedience as Avoiding Pride

We can also imitate Christ’s obedience by not exclusively following our own will.

Fundamentally, obedience is to submit one’s will and desires to another in imitation of Christ.

Brothers

For us Dominicans, we have this great gift that is our religious obedience, the only vow we explicitly profess. Through it, we allow ourselves to decrease and Christ to increase, imitating his loving obedience to the Father, and we allow our actions to be purified from the lurking plague of pride.

And for all of us here, we have always have the opportunity to take council, to ask others for advice before we act. This is not to say that we must be obedient to the advice of others. Rather, this gives us the opportunity to see that we are not just acting from a prideful will, but that what we desire to do is truly good and just.

Sacrifices done out of love

Lastly, we must offer ourselves to others by making small sacrifices fueled by love.

In doing so, we, in our own way, offer our lives for others, and we become like him who obediently offered his life for us so that we might share in the love of the Father.