Following is the text of the meditation by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the  sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024:

Last Sunday, we began our listening to chapter XV of John's Gospel, in which Jesus speaks of the bond that unites him to his own as that of a vine and its branches: not two different things, not two different lives, but the same life that circulates and bears fruit. (John 15:1-8)

Today the listening continues, (John 15:9-17) and it leads us to ask a fundamental question: what is the fruit that Jesus is talking about. The branch, we said, must bear fruit; but such a good vinedresser, such a beautiful vine, a branch so united to the vine, what good fruit will they be able to produce?

We see that fruit in today's passage, which immediately follows last Sunday's one.

Jesus, in John's Gospel, often states that he knows that the Father loves him. And he repeats this again today, but he adds something important, namely, that as the Father loves him, so he loves his disciples. (John 15:9)

Jesus does not say that as the Father loves Him, so He loves the Father. He certainly does as well, but Jesus' words go further: as the Father loves Him, so He loves others, loves His own.

Jesus wants to tell us that the love between two people cannot just be something closed, which ends within a reciprocity. Because after all, it would not be love.

If I love a person and that person reciprocates my love and everything ends there, it is certainly a beautiful, rewarding experience, but also a very poor one, because I receive nothing more than I have given.

If I don't lose anything, if I don't risk, if I don't get out of this reciprocity, I always end up at the same point in loving.

Jesus' love is not only mutual, but also open. Not just an exchange between two people, but the gift of this love to all who want to participate in it.

This is a mature love, the kind that knows how to give itself, its own love to others, the kind that keeps nothing for itself.

Love is not something to be guarded, but something we should be able to lose, in the certainty that only in this way, in losing it, does one find it again in fullness.

What is even more beautiful, however, is that this also applies to the disciples in exactly the same way. For Jesus does not ask them to reciprocate his love, but to share it among themselves, and with even others.

He does not say, "As I have loved you, so you shall love me," but even here he goes further: "As I have loved you, so you love one another." (John 15:12)

We will be his friends, then, not if we love him, but if we love one another. This love, moreover, has a definite characteristic, a particular style, namely, that Jesus asks us to love one another as He has loved us (John 15:12) to the extent that He has chosen to call love, to the end.

To love, then, is not to give something to one's brother, but to give oneself, to give one's own life to another. (John 15:13)

This is Jesus' commandment, (John 15:10) this is the Word that cuts and prunes the dead branches (John 15:2) so that they bear more fruit.

For then it means choosing to love even those who do not love us, it means wanting to step out of a logic of pure reciprocity.

The love we receive, in order for it to bear fruit, has to go far, it has to go deep, it has to die and then be reborn, it has to pour out on others. When this happens, then we know what joy is. (John 15:11)

That Easter fruit we encountered in the Gospel passages relating the Risen One's encounter with his disciples returns here: they rejoice in seeing the Lord. (John 20:20)

They rejoice in seeing that such a love, which gives life without asking for anything in return, is a love that saves life and makes it eternal.

+ Pierbattista