Today, our Lord exhorts us to fraternal love: “love one another as I love you.” (Jn 15:12), that is to say, as you have seen Me love others and you will continue to see Me do so. Jesus speaks to you as a friend, for He has told you that His Father calls you, that He wants you to become an apostle, and that He expects you to bear fruit, a fruit that is manifested through love. St. John Chrysostom affirms: “If love would be spread all over, an infinite goodness would be born out of it.”

To give love amounts to create life. Spouses know it well, for they love each other, they make a reciprocal contribution and they assume the responsibility of becoming parents by accepting, at the same time, the abnegation and self-denial of their time and their own being in favor of those they must take care of, must protect, must educate and, in short, must form as persons. Missionaries know it too, when they offer their life for the Gospel, with the same Christian spirit of sacrifice and abnegation. And friars, priests and bishops also know it, and with them all of Jesus' disciples who commit themselves to our Savior.

A short time before, Jesus had already told you what the requirements for love and bearing fruit were: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (Jn 12:24). Jesus invites you to lose your life, to deliver it to Him without any fear, to willingly die, if need be, to be able to love your brother with Christ's love, with supernatural love. Jesus invites you to attain an operative, benefactor and concrete love; this is how apostle James understood it when he said: “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (2:15-17).