Today the Lord invites us to fraternal love: "Love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12), that is, as you have seen me do and as you will still see me do. Jesus speaks to you as a friend, for he has told you that the Father calls you, that he wants you to be an apostle, and that he destines you to bear fruit, a fruit that is manifested in love. Saint John Chrysostom says: "If love were spread everywhere, a multitude of good things would spring from it."

To love is to give one's life. Spouses know this when, because they love one another, they make a reciprocal gift of their lives and assume the responsibility of being parents, also accepting the self-denial and sacrifice of their time and being for those they must care for, protect, educate, and form as persons. Missionaries know this when they give their lives for the Gospel, with the same Christian spirit of sacrifice and self-denial. And religious, priests, and bishops know this; every disciple of Jesus who commits himself to the Savior knows this.

Jesus told you a little earlier what the requirement of love is, of bearing fruit: "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 give it to Him without fear, to die to yourself so that you can love your brother with the love of Christ, with supernatural love. Jesus invites you to attain an active, beneficial, and concrete love; this is how the Apostle James understood it when he said: "If a brother or sister is naked and deprived of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' and you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith, if it does not have works, is dead indeed" (Jas 2:15-17).