Our Way and the High Way

The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary offer many points to ponder. Our words and speech about love may not be getting translated into action. That is the truth which the First Letter of John presents to the community.  According to Friar Jude Winkler, they may not have chosen to be the branch bearing much fruit grafted to the vine of Life which Jesus declares as one of His "I am" proclamations in the Gospel of John. The recommendation to the community is to obey His commandment to believe, trust, be true to His mission and to love one another. Father Larry Gillick SJ ponders about " Spirituality is actually living with the tensions caused by our Theology; that is, what we believe." The lessons we learn from our mistakes are reflections of the pruning we need to bear more fruit. Luke reveals his Stoic ideas that the community of the Way must be united because the connection to the Divine and Friar Jude suggests that he does not report the all the encounters of Paul with the other Apostles, some of which were struggles for both sides. The community of the disciples of John were not moving to the action of loving neighbour as true witness to their intimacy with Jesus in the Eucharist. This Union is the nourishment to provide the growth, in tension with our desire to do it our way, that produces the fruit of loving action in our communities.