Friday, May 8, 2026
Friday of the Fifth week of Easter
John 15:12-17
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Acts 15:22-31
Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole assembly, to choose men out of their company, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas: Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, chief men among the brothers. They wrote these things by their hand: “The apostles, the elders, and the brothers, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia: greetings. Because we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, ‘You must be circumcised and keep the law,’ to whom we gave no commandment; it seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose out men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who themselves will also tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay no greater burden on you than these necessary things: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality, from which if you keep yourselves, it will be well with you. Farewell.” So, when they were sent off, they came to Antioch. Having gathered the multitude together, they delivered the letter. When they had read it, they rejoiced over the encouragement.
Gospel
John 15:12-17
“This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you. “I command these things to you, that you may love one another.
Lectio
There is a phrase in the letter from Jerusalem that is easy to read past: "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us." Notice how naturally the two are placed side by side, the Spirit and a room full of ordinary, arguing, praying men. This is what friendship with God looks like when it becomes concrete. The apostles do not receive a message dropped from heaven; they wrestle their way toward a shared mind, and only then do they dare to say the Spirit was in it with them. And the fruit of that hard-won accord is not a rule but a relief — the burden lifted, souls no longer unsettled, a people who "rejoiced over the encouragement."
This is precisely the intimacy Jesus describes in the Gospel. "No longer do I call you servants... I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you." A servant is handed orders. A friend is let in on the whole thing. The Jerusalem council is what happens when people who have been let in on the whole thing sit down together — they carry each other's welfare as their own concern, they refuse to lay weight on shoulders already tired. Love here is not a feeling but a decision to protect another person's freedom to breathe.
And beneath it all is that quiet, staggering line: "You didn't choose me, but I chose you." Everything you are trying to do for God began as something God already decided about you. The bearing of fruit, the laying down of your life, even your desire to love well — none of it is you climbing toward him. It is you living out of a choice already made in your favor.
Where in your life right now are you carrying yourself like a servant taking orders, when Jesus is asking to be let in as a friend who tells you everything?
Who is one person whose soul you have unsettled — with your words, your demands, your unspoken expectations — that you could unburden today, the way the letter unburdened Antioch?
Saint of the day
Bl. Teresa Demjanovich, Religious (1901-1927)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora