Fifth Sunday of Easter

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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