Greetings,
From
a treatise on John by Saint Augustine, bishop:
A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. This
commandment that he is giving them is a new one, the Lord Jesus tells his
disciples. Yet was it not contained in
the Old Law, where it is written: You shall love your neighbor as yourself
? Why does the Lord call it new when it
is clearly so old? Or is the
commandment new because it divests us of our former selves and clothes us with
the new man? Love does indeed renew the
man who hears, or rather obeys its command; but only that
love which Jesus distinguished from a natural love by the qualification: As
I have loved you.
This is the kind of love that renews us. When we love as he loved us we become new
men, heirs of the new covenant and singer of the new song. My brothers, this was the love that even in
bygone days renewed the holy men, the patriarchs and prophets of old. In later times it renewed the blessed
apostles, and now it is the turn of the Gentiles. From the entire human race throughout the
world this love gathers together into one body a new people, to be the bride of
God’s only Son. She is the bride of whom
it is asked in the Song of Songs: Who is this who comes clothed in white? White indeed are her garments, for she has
been made new; and the source of her renewal is none other than this new
commandment.
And so all her members make each other’s welfare their
common care. When one member suffers,
all the members suffer with him, and if one member is glorified all the rest
rejoice. They hear and obey the Lord’s
words: A new commandment I give you, that you love one another; not as
men love one another for their own selfish ends, not merely on account of their
common humanity, but because they are all gods and sons of the Most High. They love one another as God loves them so
that they may be brothers of his only Son.
He will lead them to the goal that alone will satisfy them, where all
their desires will be fulfilled. For
when God is all in all, there will be nothing left to desire.
This love is the gift of the Lord who said: As I have
loved you, you also must love one another.
His object in loving us, then, was to enable us to love each other. By loving us himself, our mighty head has
linked us all together as members of his own body, bound to one another by the
tender bond of love.
Yours & His,
DED
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