“Whoever loves me will keep my word,” the Lord says.[1]
If you read the whole chapter, you’ll notice Jesus is repeating himself; this is the third time he says something like this. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me,” Jesus said just a few verses earlier.[2] Like a good teacher, he repeats himself. The Lord here is trying to say something important, so he’s saying it multiple times.
The disciples have a sense that something’s about to happen, that Jesus is going somewhere. Jesus told them he was going to “prepare a place” for them; “you know the way where I am going,” he said. Yet the disciples didn’t understand. “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Thomas asked. “I am the way,” Jesus said, “and the truth, and the life.”[3]
Jesus is about to be crucified, killed, and buried; he will rise again and ascend to the right hand of the Father; yet Jesus will, he strangely says, still be close to his disciples, with his disciples; and with his Father. If you read this passage closely, what Jesus is doing, he’s drawing the disciples more into the mystery of God, even closer to God, even though it feels like separation. Jesus here is trying to move his disciples from seeing things, appreciating things, materially to seeing things, appreciating things, mystically. On the night before he dies, Jesus is trying to move his disciples from the material to the mystical. Which is why this passage matters to us, for that’s the lesson; because that’s how we must know Christ today—that is, if we have not become people incapable of the mystical.
Each time Jesus talks about love and keeping his word, however exactly he says it, he is talking about the manifestation of God, the abiding of God, the indwelling of God in the person who loves him and keeps his word. “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”[4] Earlier, the way Jesus put it, he said, “I will love him and manifest myself to him.” “Lord, how will you manifest yourself to us…?” a disciple asks. “If a man love me, he will keep my word” repeats the Teacher.
So that’s how a disciple of Jesus is to remain close to Jesus, to abide in him, at least as the material circumstances of discipleship change. Jesus, who was “looked upon and touched with our hands,” as John would later write, now he is encountered in what is proclaimed, in the Gospel that is heard, preached by the apostles.[5]
Now I don’t want to get to theological here, but this is why paying attention at Mass as best you can matters; it’s why some here get bored while others see heaven, why some keep checking the time while others lose all sense of time, lost in the mystery of eternity before the altar of God. This is why two different people sitting right next to each other in church can have two radically different experiences. Again, it’s about the material and the mystical and where you exist between those two ways of engaging Christ, about whether you keep the word and love or whether you just don’t see anything.
Of course, I do not want to disturb you if you’ve never had a mystical moment in church. And I certainly don’t want you to chase after mystical moments or sentimental moments; that will ultimately take you far away from Christ. But I do want you wonder with me and pray with me about what Jesus is saying here, that if we keep his word, then that is loving him; and that is what is necessary to see him: the Son and the Father in the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? What does that look like in my life? What does it mean to move toward God mystically? Those are the questions that should become our prayers.
Undoubtedly, I could go on, but I’ll stop here. I do wonder, for example, about the love we have for our spouses, our families, our communities; I wonder if staying faithful to them, keeping our word or staying faithful to our vows, is one way to think about loving Jesus mystically; I mean, how on earth can you love your wife or your husband if you don’t keep the words of your vows? You can’t; you’re lying about love if you cheat. But that’s another door I don’t have time to open. We are dealing with the deeper mysteries here, so it’s best probably I simply quiet myself; and so, let’s pray and celebrate the Eucharist and see what we can see. Amen.
[1] John 14:23
[2] John 14:15, 21
[3] John 14:2-6
[4] John 14:23
[5] 1 John 1:1-3
© 2025 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
