Fifth Thursday of Easter

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

Love one another as I love you. What a commandment we have been given by Christ! Jesus loves us with his whole body, blood, soul, and divinity. He loves us perfectly with total desire for us, friendship towards us, and self-gift for us. The mere thought of trying to match his true love with our human and imperfect love is a challenge beyond our own abilities. However, God gives us the graces we need to love others with a pure desire, to befriend them, and to become living sacrifices of love for others. We have only to let go and let God love through us, imperfect though we made be. If we do that, then we can love perfectly by allowing God’s love to flow through us without alteration or resistance. When we do this, then we truly lay down our lives for our friends.

How do we live out this commandment to love one another as Jesus loves us? What things do we do to prepare our hearts, souls, minds, and bodies to love as they ought to love? What truly loving sacrifices do we make for others?

O Lord, show us how to love more perfectly.

Amen.

First Monday of Lent

Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.

Jesus gives us a litany of merciful acts in today’s gospel. He lays out for us what it means to be a sheep in his flock. It is not an easy life, it is a life of sacrifice and self-gift. Each of us is called to empty ourselves in different ways, some of us to feed the physically needy, while others to give drink to the spiritually wanting. Everyone we meet is in need or want of something, sometimes it is obvious and other times it is an enigma. However, when faced with our fellow children of God, we ought to love them to the best of our abilities. Only then will be able to inherit the kingdom and enjoy the heavenly feast.

How have we succeeded and failed to feed, welcome, clothe, care for, and visit those in need? What acts of mercy can we do today? Do we keep those in most need of these acts of love in our prayers?

O Lord, we want to be a blessing for the needy and worthy of inheriting your kingdom.

Amen.