#this is deeply moving
At Sinai the voice of God spoke from the midst of the fire, an event that foreshadowed the great advent of the King and Lawgiver Himself, when the Eternal Word would become flesh and dwell with us. Any theology that regards God as entirely transcendent (i.e., God is beyond any analogy with the finite) will have a problem with divine immanence (i.e., God is inherent within the finite), since the highness, holiness, and perfection of God will make Him seem distant, outside of us, far away, and unknown… Incarnational theology, on the other hand, manifests the nearness of God to disclose the divine empathy. Indeed, the LORD became “Immanuel,” “God with us,” to share our mortal condition, to know our pain, and to experience what it means to be wounded by sin, to be abandoned, alienated, forsaken. The “Eternal made flesh” bridges the gap between the realm of the infinitely transcendent One, and the finite world of people lost within their sinful frailty. We therefore celebrate the giving of the Torah both at Sinai and especially the giving of the “Living Torah” at Bethlehem with the birth of Messiah. We rejoice that God is indeed the King and Ruler over all, but we further affirm that God’s authority and rule extends to all worlds– including the realm of our finitude and need.
John J. Parsons
To love Jesus means to keep His commandments. [Such keeping] is not a matter of mere obedience but of loving imitation. [Try as one might, it is impossible to honestly obey anyone unless one also loves them; neither pride nor indifference can even feign the virtues of humility and dedication required to observe another’s commands. On the other hand,] if I love a person, I want to keep that person’s commandments, both out of loyalty and out of respect for that person’s qualities: [for as one who loves will easily discern,] the commandments [given] will reveal and mirror that person’s qualities. So, the Law given by Moses reveals God’s nature by what He commands. Just so, the actions of Jesus reveal His and the Father’s nature: He heals, He loves, He judges, He forgives, He commands. To obey the commands [given by our loving God] is a response in love, [not legalism. To keep them, like a gift, is the natural and necessary consequence of our personal relationship to Him]: we need to do just that.
Dom Henry Wansbrough; Commentary on John 14:15
[John 13:31] is the start of John’s report of the great final teaching of Jesus at the Last Supper about the future of His Church and His disciples. [It is] a great discourse of Jesus about the obligations, duties and dangers which will come upon His disciples after His own death and resurrection, [a time we also live in. So, like the Apostles,] as we approach the Birth of the Church at Pentecost, we need to listen to how Jesus envisaged His community. [This discourse immediately] gives the essentials. At the head of the Christian community stands [Christ,] the glorified Son of Man, in Whom God is glorified. But this is no distant figurehead, for He will come to be present among His disciples. And how? In the love which His disciples show for one another. One is reminded of the legend about the aged Saint John, wheeled into the church at Ephesus. When asked for the message of Jesus, all he would say was, ‘My little children, love one another.’
Dom Henry Wansbrough; Commentary on John 13:31-35
