NOTES for Joh 14:10-21

The words we read today, “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him,” are wonderful, kind, saving words. We often forget this, carried away by self-punishing repentance. In fact, repentance is joy, for obedience is love. When the Lord tells His disciples what to do, they are amazed; it seems impossible to them. “When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’” (Matt 19:25) It is hard to explain to a three-year-old child that his mother does not give him another sweet not because she is greedy or unkind, but because it would harm him. And sometimes it is simply impossible to explain to someone who has not found God how good it is to heed God’s commandments and obey them. Only as we grow into full maturity do we come to this, and only then do we finally understand what true love is: love that desires not for itself, but for the beloved. Yet when one reaches this point, when the heart already seems so full of love that everything within is burning and one is ready to go through fire and water for another person, even to the scaffold... at some point one discovers that love has run dry. Everyone goes through this. Juan de la Cruz called this state “the dark night of the soul.” But this happens only so that we may understand that God alone is the source of love, and that we love not because we are so kind and wonderful, but because He gives it. For, as our poet so beautifully said, “and sympathy is given to us as grace is given to us” (F. Tyutchev).