Sunday, May 21 : Saint Augustine

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another”… Love renews those who hear, or rather those who obey; but not any love, only that love which the Lord distinguished from natural love by adding the words: “As I have loved you”… “All the members of the body are concerned for one another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with him; if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with him” (1Cor 12,25-26). For they hear the Lord’s words and keep them: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another”; not as people love only to spoil one another, nor as human beings love one another simply because they are human, but as people love one another because they are all “gods” (Jn 10,34) and “children of the Most High” (Lk 6,35), and so brothers of his only Son. These love one another with the love with which he loved them so much that he will lead them to the end which will bring them fulfillment and the true satisfaction of their desires. For when God is “all in all” (1Cor 15,28), no desire will be left unfulfilled… For what do they love, those who love their neighbor with a pure, spiritual love, if not God? This is the love the Lord wants to distinguish from a purely natural affection when he adds: “As I have loved you”. What has he loved in us if not God? Not God as we possess him now but as he wants us to possess him where “God will be all in all”. Doctors love their patients because of the health they want to give them, not because of their sickness. “Love one another as I have loved you”. This is why he has loved us: so that we, in our turn, might love one another.

maronite readings – rosary,team