Paschal Meditation: "The love with which you have loved me"

"Church of Christ" icon. Russian.

“…So that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

— John 17:26

Before the Lord Jesus returned to his Father, he prays for all those who would believe in him through the apostolic witness.  He prays for every generation of the church; he prays for us.  Jesus prays that we would be one in him, united in love, in order that the world would believe that the Father sent the Son in love.  

When Jesus prays “that they may be one,” he asks that his church might share in the unity he has with the Father.  “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” he prays, “may they also be in us” (Jn. 17.21).  Where is it that we may be one?  We may be one with the Son in the Father, for the Mediator prays that those whom the Father has given him, “may be with me where I am” (v. 24), and where is the place of the Son, but in the Father?  And how are we joined to the Son, but by his gift of the Holy Spirit?  We may be one in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for, as Augustine puts it, “they are our place.”*

Why does Jesus pray that those who believe in him may be one?  He prays to the Father that we would be one, “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (v. 23).  He prays that we might be one so that our concrete love for each other might witness to God’s love for the world.  For “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him,” and “if we love one another, God’s love abides in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn. 4:9, 12).  Our love shows forth God’s love, because he first loved us (4:19).  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as the love with which the Father has loved the Son is in us.  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

What is the love we make known?  It is the love of God, who is trinity.  Our love makes it known that the Father has loved us even as he has loved the Son (Jn. 17:23).  As Augustine perceptively comments, 

“That is to say, in the Son the Father loves us, because in him he has chosen us before the foundation of the world. […] The love, therefore, wherewith God loves, is incomprehensible and immutable. For it was not from the time that we were reconciled unto him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us; but he did so before the foundation of the world, that we also might be his sons along with his Only-begotten, before as yet we had any existence of our own.”**

God is love, always and already loving us in himself.  And the love with which the Father eternally loves the Son is in us, because by his Gift we are made part of the totus Christus, the whole Christ:

“But how else is the love wherewith the Father loved the Son in us also, but because we are his members and are loved in him, since he is loved in the totality of his person, as both Head and members?  Therefore he added, “and I in them;” as if saying, Since I am also in them.  For in one sense he is in us as in his temple; but in another, because we are also himself, seeing that, in accordance with his becoming man, that he might be our Head, we are his body.”***

Jesus prays that we may be one to show forth the love of God, who is love.  Therefore, let us love one another.

* Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 110.3.

** Ibid. 110.5–6, my emphasis.

*** Ibid. 111.6, my emphasis.

"He Ascended into Heaven"

The Ascension, Rabula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

“God has gone up with a shout,

the LORD with the sound of the ram's-horn.”

— Psalm 47:5

Christ our God “has gone up with a shout” (Ps. 47:5).  He went up with a shout when “the Father of glory”—his Father and our Father, his God and our God (Jn. 20:17)—raised him in the power of the Spirit and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph. 1:17, 20–21).  Jesus the Messiah, the King of glory, lives and reigns over the nations.  Seated at the Father’s right hand, he is destroying “every ruler and every authority and every power,” subduing all his enemies until even death is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:24–26).  His reign is not like that of the nations, for he reigns as the Lamb who was slain.    He reigns over the powers, because “all things have been created through him and for him” and because “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them,” triumphing over them in his cross (Col. 1:16; 2:15).  His weakness is mightier than the nations, who display only an empty simulacrum of strength.  He is “mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8), trampling down death by death.

Christ has gone up with a shout, that those who believe might know “the immeasurable greatness” of God’s power for us (Eph. 1:19).  He returned to the Father that he might pour out on his church the Gift, the promised Holy Spirit.  He fills his church, which is his body, with his Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people” (1:14).  He pours out his Spirit as the pledge that we are, with Christ, children of God and joint heirs of his kingdom (Rom. 8:16–17).  The Spirit bears witness that Christ, who “ascended in the flesh to the bodiless Father,” has lifted up all our humanity and brought it to his Father.*  Christ sends the Spirit “that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.”†

Christ has gone up with a shout, bearing our humanity in his body into the life of the Triune Lord, and giving the Spirit that his members might bear his life in their bodies.  Through the gift of the Spirit they share in his life.  He gives them to become a people capable of witnessing to his peaceful reign in the midst of the idolatrous and death-bound kingdoms of the world; they do not fear because he has won the victory.

* John of Damascus, Troparia, Canon for the Assumption.

† Missale Romanum, Preface of the Ascension I.

Paschal Meditation: Vicit agnus noster

Agnus Dei bas-relief, St. Euphrasius basilica, Croatia

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν,

θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,

καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι,

ζωὴν χαρισάμενος!

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

— Paschal troparion

“Death will be no more.”

— Rev. 21:4

Death will be no more, because our Lamb, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered” (Rev. 5:5).  He has “trampled down death by death,” and by his blood he has “redeemed for God, from every family, language, people and nation, a kingdom of priests to serve our God.”  Jesus, “the faithful and true witness (martyr),” has conquered by his obedience unto death, from which he was raised as “the firstborn of the dead” (3:14, 1:4).  “Do not be afraid,” he says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one.  I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (1:17b–18); “because I live, you also will live” (Jn. 14:19b).

Christ the Lamb has conquered death, but death has not yet been swallowed up forever (Isa. 25:7, 8; cf. 1 Cor. 15:54).  Death’s shadow is still spread over all the nations, and under it, tears stream down many faces; multitudes mourn and cry and suffer.  Thus it takes courage to wait for the salvation of the Lord (cf. Isa. 25:9), to maintain hope in the midst of devastation and violence.  Walking in the way of the Lord Jesus—who was hated by all who could not bear the blazing light of the truth—requires having the courage to become hated, and yet to love.  “In the world you face persecutions,” he told his disciples, “But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (Jn. 16:33).

Christ has conquered by emptying himself, by laying down his life for the world—in short, he has conquered by love.  Those who would follow him must follow him in love, must lay down their lives for the other.  For “we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 Jn. 3:16).  

Such courageous love—the love of “patient endurance” (Rev. 1:9), love that conquers* hatred and fear and injustice, love that “overcomes evil with good” (Rom. 12:21)—is born of the gift of the conquering Lamb.  He himself pours this love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that was given to us,” so that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 5:5, 8:37).  Through the gift of the Spirit by which he conquered death, Christ the Lamb adorns his bride, the holy city (Rev. 21:2).  Adorned in love, she already sings to him from whom nothing can separate her, “I love you, O Lord, my strength.”†

* Cf. Rev. 21:7, 2:7, 11, 17, 26, 28, 3:5, 12, 21.

† Rom. 8:39, Ps. 18:1.  Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.28.

Paschal Meditation: Christ and Peter

Detail of miniature of Christ speaking to Peter,
"Arnstein Passional" (12th c.)

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” — John 10:14–15

That bright morning by the Sea of Tiberias after the risen Lord had breakfasted with his disciples, he strengthened Simon son of John to be what he was called.  When Jesus had first looked at Simon son of John, he said to him, “‘You are to be called Cephas’ (Petros, Peter)” (Jn. 1:42).  He called him the rock (petra) who would prove unstable, who would be prostrated by denying “the stumbling stone” (Rom. 9:32).  Now again he calls Simon to come to him, the Living Stone, and to be built upon the Cornerstone, becoming, like him, a living stone (cf. 1 Pt. 2:4–5).  Jesus strengthened Simon son of John to become Peter.

That bright morning the Shepherd removed the shame of his sheep who had scattered; the one who was deserted comforted (com-fortis) the one who vainly promised never to desert him, “though all become deserters” (Mt. 26:33).  When Peter told Jesus, “I will lay down my life for you” (Jn. 13:37), he presumed to possess the strength of love necessary “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13).  But his denials revealed the hollowness of his words, and he was deflated.  Now his Lord comes to build him up with love.  Three times Jesus gives Peter to declare his love for him, and three times he calls him to love “in truth and action” (1 Jn. 3:18) by feeding his flock.  In so doing, Jesus casts out the fear in which Peter had denied him, and leads him to the perfection of love.*  The Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep (10:15), strengthens Peter to follow him.

Because Jesus first loved him, Peter will lay down his life for him, glorifying God in his death.  As Augustine puts it, 

“Such was the end reached by that denier and lover (ille negator, et amator); elated by his presumption, prostrated by his denial, cleansed by his weeping, approved by his confession, crowned by his suffering, this was the end he reached, to die with a perfected love for the name of him with whom, by a perverted forwardness, he had promised to die. He would do, when strengthened by his resurrection, what in his weakness he promised prematurely. For the needful order was that Christ should first die for Peter’s salvation, and then that Peter should die for the preaching of Christ.”†

* 1 Jn. 4:18.  Cf. Augustine: “Let it be the office of love to feed the Lord’s flock, if it was the signal of fear to deny the Shepherd” (Io. ev. tr. 123.5).

† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 123.4.

Detail of Apse Mosaic, Basilica San Clemente, Rome

Paschal Meditation: By the Sea of Tiberias

Detail of miniature, S. Netherlands, 15th c.

I

“Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach” (Jn. 21:4).  As the day dawns, “the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16, cf. 2 Pt. 1:19), the light who is not overcome by darkness, the risen Lord, stands on the shore.  He stood by the Sea of Tiberias, and they saw his glory, but they did not yet “see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2), as he will be revealed on that other shore of “the end of the age” (cf. Mt. 13:47–50).  It is not yet that Day when “there will be no more night,” but very early in the morning they glimpse the one who “will be their light” (Rev. 22:5).

II

By the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus says to the seven disciples, “Come and have breakfast” (Jn. 21:12).  They saw “a charcoal fire” with “fish on it, and bread,” provided by the Lord himself; to these he asks them to add some of the one hundred and fifty-three fish they had just caught at his word (21:9–10).  And as he did by the same sea before his resurrection (6:1–13), the risen Lord “took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish” (21:13).  He who said, “Whoever eats me will live because of me” (6:57), feeds the seven by the sea.  

III

The seven are fed by the risen Lord, “the Fish, which was raised from the deep to be the food” of the faithful.*  Jesus, “the bread that came down from heaven” (6:58), feeds them.  To what he himself provides, he adds the fish received as his gift.  He feeds them that they might “abide in him” and he in them (6:56).  As Augustine puts it, “The fish roasted is Christ having suffered; he himself also is the bread that comes down from heaven.  With him is incorporated the Church to participate in everlasting blessedness.”†  The breakfast on the beach is a foretaste of “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).

* Augustine, Conf. 13.23.34.

† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 123.2: “Piscis assus, Christus est passus. Ipse est et panis qui de coelo descendit. Huic incorporatur Ecclesia ad participandam beatitudinem sempiternam.”