John 15: 18-21
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Abide in Love
John emphasizes in Chapter 15 that each true follower of Jesus “abides” in Jesus as Jesus abides in each of his disciples. And, since Jesus abides in the Father, then each true follower of Jesus also abides in the Father, and all are one with Jesus in the Father. St Ignatius incorporates this beautiful reality of Trinitarian abiding in the Principle and Foundation that is the cornerstone of Spiritual Exercises. In the Principle and Foundation, Ignatius invites us to desire to live into the self-giving love of the Trinity by wanting and choosing every day what better leads to God’s deepening life in us.
Lovely stuff, but there is a cost to choosing to abide in the self-giving love of the Trinity, a cost too dear for many. The cost is that “the world”, a place of self-serving greed that all too easily trumps God, hates and rejects those who truly follow Jesus. Those who abide in Jesus and live out the poverty of the Beatitudes are not “of this world.”
Can you pray today for the grace to desire to be rejected and despised by the world as one who abides in the love of Jesus and the Father?
—Bill Lipscomb is a spiritual director with the Ignatian Spirituality Center and the Church of the Gesu in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bill is a graduate of the Seminars in Ignatian Formation program of the Midwest Jesuits. Bill serves as a board member for the Ignatian Spirituality Project and as a spiritual reflector for the Ignatian Volunteer Corps.
Prayer
Jesus, we want to abide in you and follow your way, but the world pushes and pulls us away from you and the mission of the Father. Protect us, dear friend; hide us in your wounds away from the worldly snares of money and self-seeking. Free us by your love to live in your love, for this is the deepest desire of our lives. Amen.
—Bill Lipscomb