Tuesday, May 9 : Saint Thomas More

“Before the feast of the Pasch Jesus, knowing that his hour had come to go out of this world unto his Father, having loved those that were his own, unto the end he loved them”… In the Gospel John was specially called “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. This disciple declares here what manner of faithful lover our holy Savior was, of whom he himself was so beloved. For unto these words he straightway joins the rehearsing of Christ’s bitter passion, beginning with the Last Supper and therein his humble washing of his disciples’ feet, the sending forth of the traitor, and after that his teaching, his prayer, his capture, his judging, his scourging, his crucifying and all the whole piteous tragedy of his most bitter passion. Before which things Saint John sets the aforesaid words to declare that all these things that Christ did, in all this he did it for very love. Which love he well declared unto his disciples in many ways at the time of his Last Supper, giving them charge that in loving each other they should follow his example (Jn 13:34). For those that he loved, he loved unto the end, and this he wished that they also should do. He was not an inconstant lover that does as many do, love for a while and then, upon some light occasion, leave it off and turn form being a friend to an enemy, as the false traitor Judas did. But he still so persevered in love unto the very end that for very love he came to that painful end, and that not only for his friends that were already his, but for his enemies, to make them his friends, and that not for his benefit but only for their own.

maronite readings – rosary,team