Think not then, my brethren, that when the Lord says, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another,” there is any overlooking of that greater commandment, which requires us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind; for along with this seeming oversight, the words “that you love one another” appear also as if they had no reference to that second commandment, which says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” For “on these two commandments,” He says, “hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40 But both commandments may be found in each of these by those who have good understanding. For, on the one hand, he that loves God cannot despise His commandment to love his neighbor; and on the other, he who in a holy and spiritual way loves his neighbor, what does he love in him but God? That is the love, distinguished from all mundane love, which the Lord specially characterized, when He added, “as I have loved you.” For what was it but God that He loved in us? Not because we had Him, but in order that we might have Him; and that He may lead us on, as I said a little ago, where God is all in all. It is in this way, also, that the physician is properly said to love the sick; and what is it he loves in them but their health, which at all events he desires to recall; not their sickness, which he comes to remove? Let us, then, also so love one another, that, as far as possible, we may by the solicitude of our love be winning one another to have God within us.
From Tractates on the Gospel of John, #65, by St. Augustine of Hippo.
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Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)
Jesus the Good Shepherd defends, knows, and above all loves his sheep. And this is why he gives his life for them (cf Jn 10:15). Love for his sheep, that is, for each one of us, leads him to die on the cross because this is the Father’s will – that no one should be lost. Christ’s love is not selective; it embraces everyone. He himself reminds us of this in today’s Gospel when he says: “And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (Jn 10:16). These words testify to his universal concern: He is everyone’s shepherd. Jesus wants everyone to be able to receive Father’s love and encounter God. Pope Francis, homily, Fourth Sunday of Easter 2021 The ‘Resurrection’ to which [the Apostles] bore witness was, in fact, not the action of rising from the dead but the state of having risen; a state, as they held, attested by intermittent meetings during a limited period (except for the special, and in some ways different, meeting vouchsafed to St Paul). This
termination of the period is important, for, as we shall see, there is no possibility of isolating the doctrine of the Resurrection from that of the Ascension. The next point to notice is that the Resurrection was not regarded simply or chiefly as evidence for the immortality of the soul. It is, of course, often so regarded today: I have heard a man maintain that ‘the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival’. Such a view cannot at any point be reconciled with the language of the New Testament. On such a view Christ would simply have done what all men do when they die: the only novelty would have been that in His case we were allowed to see it happening. But there is not in Scripture the faintest suggestion that the Resurrection was new evidence for something that had in fact been always happening. The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits’, the ‘pioneer of life’. He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened. Taken from ‘Miracles’, Chapter 16, by C.S. Lewis Divine Mercy Sunday
This Sunday is known as Divine Mercy Sunday and is so named in order to highlight the Message of Divine Mercy as proclaimed by Sister Faustina Kowalska and promoted by Pope John Paul II. The faithful are encouraged to spend time to discover more about the mercy of God, to learn how to trust in Jesus, and to respond to the invitation to live lives which are as merciful to others as Christ is merciful to us. |
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