4 May 2026 – Monday of the 5th week of Easter
H O M I L Y
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today’s Gospel, again taken from chapter 14 of John, as in recent days, takes up the theme of ‘dwelling’. This theme of ‘dwelling’ is linked to that of the ‘way’ taken to reach it. It is also linked to that of love and communion. When we dwell somewhere with someone, when we have chosen to make our home there, this implies that there is a relationship of communion and friendship between us and that person (or those people). Otherwise, it would be hell. “Hell is other people,” said the philosopher Sartre – other people, when there is no bond of communion between them and us.
Jesus therefore says that if anyone loves Him, they will keep His word, or His commandments. Then His Father will love them, and they (the Father and He) will come and make their home within that person. This means that they will establish them in a stable, solid and lasting relationship of friendship with them.
To keep the Word of Jesus is to do as Mary did, who, at the beginning of the Gospel, even though she did not fully understand Jesus’ words, kept them and pondered them in her heart. We, too, when we read the Word of God, never understand more than a very small part of what God wishes to tell us. But if we keep these words in our hearts with affection, and above all if we model our lives on them, this Word – inseparable from His Father and His Spirit – will remain within us, and we will gradually be transformed into it, within this relationship of communion.
What Jesus tells us here, in human words, is infinitely greater and more beautiful than anything that can be said about it, even than what Jesus can say using our human language. That is why he tells us that he will send us his Spirit who, without words, in an ineffable way, will remind us inwardly of all that Jesus has told us and will lead us to an understanding of this Word, an understanding that can only be attained in love.
Let us open ourselves to this Word, to this communion and to this coming of God within us.
Armand