“You are in me and I am in you” (Jn 14:20)
Reader friend, I believed that Jesus led us to a summit as he revealed the mystery of divine union, the mystery of humble love that surpasses all love and humility, the unfathomable mystery of the eternal perichoresis between himself and his Father, in the humble presence of the Holy Spirit. I was ready to be silent in repentance, adoration, and contemplation of this magnificent revelation; I was ready to never again break my silence and to dedicate the rest of my life to learning humble love, when I realized that this revelation was not complete. Shortly after speaking to the disciples about his perichoresis with the Father, he continued his conversation with them, giving them another, even more profound, revelation. Continuing his conversation with the disciples, Jesus spoke to them of another bond within the perichoresis, the bond of perichoresis between them and him: “you in me and I in you.” What a startling revelation, leading us further into unfathomable mystery! It is on this mystery that we must now pause in order to examine it! May the Holy Spirit enlighten me and guide me in meditating on this overwhelming revelation.
There is no bond of love stronger and deeper than that of perichoresis, the bond of humble, eternal love that Jesus describes in such a few words of such great simplicity, the bond which unites him to his Father: “he in me and I in him.” This marvelous bond of unfathomable depth causes us to fall to our knees in adoration since this unfathomable depth belongs to the mystery of God. This profound bond of love does not exist and cannot exist between humans because people cannot be in one another and vice versa. This bond of perichoresis exists only between the Father and the Son within the most holy Trinity, and this has been the case from all eternity. Between humans, as we have seen, the strongest bond of love is the conjugal bond, which leads the bride in the Song of Songs to say, “I am to my beloved, and my beloved is to me” (6:3). This human bond, no matter how strong, is merely a bond of reciprocity expressed with “to,” not the bond of perichoresis expressed with “in”; it is infinitely far from being as strong and profound as the bond of perichoresis that Jesus experiences with his Father in a humble love, the intensity of which surpasses all love and all humility, beyond words. Yet, as astonishing as it may seem, here Jesus speaks to the disciples of a bond of perichoresis with them, identical to the bond he experiences with his Father: “You in me and I in you,” he tells them. What a breathtaking revelation! And what ineffable grace!
“You in me and I in you”: Jesus is not revealing another perichoresis that would unite him to us in addition to the perichoresis that unites him to his Father; it cannot, in fact, be another perichoresis since there is no other; there is only one, the single divine perichoresis. What Jesus does here, more precisely, is to open up this unique divine perichoresis in welcome to us. This is truly overwhelming! If Jesus were only a man, he couldn’t say this to us, to we humans, since perichoresis between humans does not exist; that he says it is because he is God. So here is Jesus, in his divinity, opening up this divine mystery in order to offer us, human beings, a place within it. What a marvelous and overwhelming grace which brings me to my knees!
Just before revealing this to the disciples, Jesus begins by telling them, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live” (14:19). In saying this, Jesus was speaking of his imminent resurrection, and then he adds, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (14:20). What a profoundly moving statement! “You in me and I in you!” This statement follows on from what Jesus says about his union with his Father, which shows us that it is indeed the same perichoresis he is opening up to us and not another. Here, he is speaking to the disciples about this new perichoretic relationship with them, after speaking to them about the coming day of his resurrection, and he then specifies, “On that day you will know”; the future tense he uses here is linked to his imminent resurrection, while the rest of the sentence gives no indication of time and has no verb. Word for word, Jesus said, “I in my Father, you in me and I in you”.
The future tense of the verb “to know” should not mislead us; the future applies not to our perichoresis with Jesus, but the knowledge we will have of it; our perichoresis, however, is expressed in the implied present tense, the same tense he uses to describe his connection with the Father, that is, the timeless present. Just as Jesus is in his Father, we too are in Jesus and Jesus in us. How wonderful! We see that our perichoresis with Jesus is the present reality! This is truly magnificent: we in Jesus and Jesus in us! It is possible that we are unaware of it, and that this profound connection with Jesus remains beyond our perception; this can certainly be the case, but regardless, this perichoresis with Jesus, even if imperceptible to our hearts, is part of our present reality. Reader friend, the knowledge we have of our perichoresis with Jesus undoubtedly depends on our humility; until we are humble enough, we will not perceive this profound bond that already unites us to Jesus; only the humble, no doubt, perceive that Jesus is in them and that they are in Jesus. However, even if we are not humble, even if we do not perceive this bond, it is already our present reality. What an unfathomable wonder!
This present connection between Jesus and us is confirmed by Jesus a few verses later in the same conversation with the disciples, when he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” using the present tense to describe our present connection with him (15:5). Then he adds, still in the present tense, “Whoever remains in me and I in him, he will bear fruit in abundance; apart from me you can do nothing.” “He remains in me and I in him,” Jesus says of the connection he has with each of us. This is wonderful because he speaks in the present tense, not as a promise for the end times, but as a present reality, a reality of life; a demanding program for life, certainly, but one that always rests on the reality of his presence in us and our presence in him — the active presence of Jesus that cannot but fill us with wonder. I will say no more because Philemon meditated at length on this verse (see John 15:5). I will now dwell on the verse on which Philemon did not meditate: “You in me and I in you” (14:20).
“You in me and I in you”: if we don’t perceive the connection of our perichoresis with Jesus, we are to experience it through faith. So, to enlighten us and help us experience this reality of faith, Jesus continues, speaking in the following verses about our love for him and our obedience to his commandments (14:21–22). Jesus thereby enters into the concrete reality of our lives, into our love for him and our obedience to his commandments, and it is in this tangible reality that he situates our imperceptible perichoresis with him. He in us: even if this is imperceptible and invisible to us, Jesus is nonetheless in us, in us through his infinite grace, and it is again through faith that we can perceive and experience him. Our perichoresis with him is already a present reality offered to us, proposed within the framework of a life program made up of love and obedience, a program lived in faith, but a program of which Jesus does not say everything because it contains a word that he does not pronounce, an unspeakable word, a word that belongs to the treasure of the unspeakable, the word “humility”.
Reader friend, the presence of Jesus within us is linked to an act of faith on our part, and it reveals his ineffable humility. He must be so very humble to humble himself to the very depths of our hearts, so unworthy of him, to dwell there. His humble presence within us then calls for our humble love for him, in an act of faith in his presence and in the reciprocity of humility. The more humble we are in our love for him and in our obedience to his commandments, the more we will be given to perceive that we are in him and he in us. How wonderful! But also what a demanding task! Nevertheless, in his infinite grace, Jesus offers us here the opportunity to advance on a magnificent path of faith that he opens before us with a love that surpasses all love. Our Lord Jesus, in his ineffable divinity, is closer than we can imagine; he is in us, and he tells us that we are in him. This is indescribable, invisible, inaccessible to our senses, but it is offered to us freely and is to be lived in faith. Reader friend, this program of life is offered us as a present reality; let us begin then, and live accordingly without further delay, united to him in our humble love for him and in humble obedience to his commandments!
To better experience all Jesus reveals and offers us here, we will do well to delve a little deeper into the mystery of our perichoresis with him. We then observe that perichoresis is the expression of a bond of sonship; it is, in fact, the Father and the Son’s experience at the heart of the Trinity, a different bond than they experience with the Holy Spirit since neither is in a perichoresis with the Holy Spirit; both are in union with the Holy Spirit, certainly, but in a different kind of bond; only the Father and the Son experience the bond of perichoresis. This then leads us to think that this bond of sonship of Jesus with his Father is also a bond of sonship that he experiences with us. How astonishingly wonderful!
Reader friend, we should note that Jesus does not reveal this bond to the world at large nor in their presence. Indeed, while he reveals the perichoresis that unites him with his Father openly to the world (10:38), it is only to the disciples that he reveals the bond of sonship that unites them to him, and nowhere else but in this final conversation. This also leads us to believe that it is only with them that he experiences the bond of sonship, which is entirely unknown to others. What a wonder! The bond that Jesus reveals here to the disciples makes them, and therefore us after them, children of Jesus; the bond of love that Jesus reveals here between us and him is a bond of filial love. This is such a profound revelation! I now understand why it was only the disciples Jesus addressed with the vocative he used at the beginning of his final conversation, “my little children” (téknia, Jn 13:33). Similarly, later, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, when alone with them, he addressed them with another, synonymous vocative, “my little children” (païdia, 21:5).[1] How wonderful! These two vocatives, which only the disciples heard from him, are both diminutives, both filled with Jesus’ tender affection for them, diminutives that didn’t infantilize the disciples, but revealed to them a profound bond of filial love woven in tenderness, a unique bond that Jesus shared with no one else. How profoundly moving it is for us to hear this revelation from Jesus, a revelation he addressed only to his disciples, but therefore to us as well today in the secret of our hearts!
O Lord Jesus, the revelation you give us here is overwhelming and surpasses anything I could have imagined; it reveals the magnificent, tender love you have for each of your disciples. Blessed are you for this ineffable tenderness that you discreetly reveal, upon which rests the profound connection you forge with us, a connection that reflects the bond of filial love you share with the Father; blessed are you for this bond you now share, you in us and we in you; blessed are you for your presence within us, which is also a wonderful help since your tender love is an astonishing force at work in our hearts. May your presence impel us to be truly at work ourselves and to live by your grace in a humble love for you in humble obedience to your word; not tomorrow, but today, and not merely with our lips, but with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength, in the humble love we pray you give us; blessed are you because it is by drawing on the strength of the tender love that you have for us and with the grace of the Holy Spirit that we can love you; blessed are you eternally, O you who are our Lord and our God, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages.
[1]In Greek, it is generally the addition of an “i” that transforms a noun into a diminutive; thus, teknion is the diminutive of teknon and païdion is the diminutive of païs. Furthermore, the addition of a possessive adjective is very rare in the vocative case, but it is commonly good practice for us to add one, which is why it is better to translate as “my little children” rather than “little children,” especially since here the possessive reinforces the affectionate aspect of the diminutive. Finally, Greek being comparatively rich, it is difficult to give full expression to the close synonyms “my little children” (teknia) and “my little children” (païdia)!