This is the Gospel reading for today. I know that we hear it all the time and its ideas have been so secularized that it loses so much of its gusto, but maybe today, maybe in the place where you are sitting, reading this, you need to hear it once again. So take a moment. Read it slowly. Absorb the beauty, simplicity, and fullness of this commandment.

Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

This I command you: love one another.” Jn 15:9-17