In all truth I tell you, By himself the Son can do nothing; He can do only what he sees the Father doing: And whatever the Father does the Son does too.
-John 5:19

[Jesus'] obedience means a total, fearless listening to his loving Father.  Between the Father and the Son there is only love.  Everything that belongs to the Father, he entrusts to the Son (Luke 10:22), and everything the Son has received, he returns to the Father.  The Father opens himself totally to the Son and puts everything in his hands:  all knowledge (John 12:50), all glory (John 8:54), all power (John 5:19-21).  And the Son opens himself totally to the Father and thus returns everything into his Father's hands.  "I came from the Father and have come into the world and now I leave the world to go to the Father" (John 16:28).

This inexhaustible love between the Father and the Son includes and yet transcends all forms of love known to us.  It includes the love of a father and mother, a brother and
sister, a husband and wife, a teacher and friend.  But it also goes far beyond the many limited and limiting human experiences of love we know.  It is a caring yet demanding love.  It is a supportive yet severe love.  It is a gentle yet strong love.  It is a love that gives life yet accepts death.  In this divine love Jesus was sent into the world, to this divine love Jesus offered himself on the cross.   This all-embracing love, which epitomizes the relationship between the Father and the Son, is a divine Person, coequal with the Father and the Son.  It has a personal name.  It is called the Holy Spirit.  The Father loves the Son and pours himself out in the Son.  The Son is loved by the Father and returns all he is to the Father.   The Spirit is love itself, eternally embracing the Father and the Son.

This eternal community of love is the center and source of Jesus' spiritual life, a life of uninterrupted attentiveness to the Father in the Spirit of love.   It is from this life that Jesus' ministry grows. His eating and fasting, his praying and acting, his traveling and resting, his preaching and teaching, his exorcising and healing, were all done in this
Spirit of love.  We will never understand the full meaning of Jesus' richly varied ministry unless we see how the many things are rotted in the one thing:  listening to the Father in the intimacy of perfect love.  When we see this, we will also realize that the goal of Jesus' ministry is nothing less than to bring us into this most intimate community.

Today in the Gospel reading of the liturgy, Jesus reveals that everything he does is done in relationship with his Father...

Jesus' words have a special meaning for me.  I must live in an ongoing relationship with Jesus and through him with the Father.  This relationship is the core of the spiritual life.  This relationship prevents my life from being consumed by "keeping up" with this.  This relationship prevents my days from becoming boring, fatiguing, draining, depressing, and frustrating.  If all that I do can be come more and more an expression of my participation in God's life of total giving and receiving in love, everything else will be blessed and will lose its fragmented quality.  This does not mean that everything will become easy and harmonious.   There  will still be much agony, but when connected with God's own agony, even my agony can lead to life.

Prayer

And so, I pray to you, Yahweh, at the time of your favor; In your faithful love answer me, in the constancy of your saving power.

Answer me, Yahweh, for your faithful love is generous; In your tenderness turn towards me; Do not turn away from your servant.
-Ps. 69:13, 16

By Henri J.M. Nowen