“For us, life come and goes and does not stop; we exist within this dynamism, and live in its passing.”  – Raimon Panikkar

There is a sense of passing things on, i.e., transmission going on in Jesus’ long discourse with his disciples in John the evangelist’s gospel.  Having presented the disciples with the images of the Father as the Vine grower, Himself as the vine, and the disciples as the branches, Jesus in today’s gospel (JN 15: 9-17), now seems to be drawing these images together in a way that describes the dynamic flow of Love. 

Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy might be in you
and your joy might be complete.

The movement is curious and important.  It’s not a straight line.   At first it may seem so – Love comes from the Father, through Jesus and into the disciples.  Yet suddenly, there seems to be a stopping point or a pause at least:

Remain in my love

Normally, we think of remaining in the sense of staying, halting, coming to a static position.  Raimon Panikkar helps us with the translation of the Latin word manere, by indicating that in its use here, it carries a much more dynamic sense of what we normally understand by remaining.[i]   When Jesus instructs his disciples to remain in my love, this is not a ‘staying put’ connotation.  This is not a resting place.  Nor is it a hiding place.  It’s a remaining that calls from the deep to the deep as psalm 42 tells us.  But the depth of this abiding or remaining is indeed a burning fire.

Manere is remaining one in the other.  It is not simply staying with someone. It has an intrinsic power to include and transcend.  As Panikkar points out, Christ takes us to the Father and does not remain enclosed in us.[ii] This is a fiery and propulsive love that is received and then continues to move, but does not leave you behind.  And this propelling forward is meant to make further connections and to bring others into this love.  The circle is not enclosed, but extends outward in ever-widening concentric spiraling motions, like a drop of rain falling from above on the still surface of a lake, or from below, an unseen movement that breaks the water surface, sending out the waves of resounding rings.  

This is quite a sense of remaining in love.  It means that, by its nature, it must go forth, carrying you and everyone else touched by it along!  It is fire and water, burning and flowing, with an unstoppable force.  This is what it is all about as far as Jesus is concerned.  Everything he has tried to convey – all his commandments, which are only still his Father’s commandments, are captured in this directive to remain in my love. Love alone is the commandment, and all else follows.  It is a magnetic force that simultaneously sends itself forth!  This is what Eucharistic love looks like – an encounter that continues to encounter – love circling around you, drawing you in until it catches you up in its fiery movement and then moves you outward toward others![iii]

“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you
and your joy might be complete.”

When we can recognize this movement and be drawn into it, and then remain within it, we experience it as a dance of joy.  In Greek, this is perichoresis, as Panikkar describes it, the interpenetration of the divine and the human.[iv]  To remain in love is to dance in love and allow love to dance in you!  However, as anyone who has danced knows, you must surrender to your partner.  You have to sense the body movements and go with the sensations – trusting and participating.  Only then can joy come.  Suffering in surrender is a critical piece of the dancing. 

Within this there is a completeness of your joy, as Jesus says, that arises.  However, this sense of completeness is more a fullness that does not have limits.  As the remaining continues, the water flows, the fire burns, the dance grows, the choreography is extended and enhanced, and there are more dancers.  The magnetism grows in abundant proportions even as it spreads like wildfire.

This love captures and moves, includes and transcends, flows and burns, and provides its own fuel.  There is really no way of exhausting the metaphors or images that can be used in attempts to describe this Eucharistic dance of remaining in love!  I frankly am very content in knowing that the remaining dance floor is infinite!  Shall we…?

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[i] Raimon Panikkar, CHRISTOPHANY: The Fullness of Man (ORBIS BOOKS: 2004), 25.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid, 24.  Panikkar’s discussion of manere lies here within a broader topic of a living experience of Christ that radiates or shines forth in our lives.  He calls this Christophany or a Christophanic experience (Gk phania meaning shining).  The dynamic relational character of manere as a deep inter-experience in Christ catapults us outward toward the universe in what Panikkar will call a cosmotheandric experience.

[iv] Ibid., 22.