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This is the nature of love: to the extent that we distance ourselves from the center of the circle and do not love God, we distance ourselves from our neighbour; but if we love God, then the nearer we draw to him in love, the more we are united with our neighbour in love.
- Dorotheus of Gaza, “Instructions”
(Is there someone you're struggling to love these days? Ask God to supply the love needed.)
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Acts 13:13-25; Psalm 89:2-3, 21-22, 25 and 27
Jn 13:16-20
When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he said to them:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master
nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.
If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.
I am not speaking of all of you.
I know those whom I have chosen.
But so that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.
From now on I am telling you before it happens,
so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send
receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
John 13:16-20 (Jesus, the servant)
Jesus’ Resurrection won for us the grace to love as God loves. This love is to take the form of loving service, however, and is not to be used for self-gbrification.
• Leo Tolstoy wrote that people who live according to principles other than love can justify all sorts of treachery against other people, invoking their principles as a rationale. Do you believe this?
• Who are the primary beneficiaries of the loving service you offer? Can you expand this circle?
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
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BOOK II: THE HISTORY OF THE GENERATION AND HEAVENLY BIRTH OF DIVINE LOVE
Chapter 21: How our Savior's loving attractions assist and accompany us to faith and charity
Our Saviour draws hearts by the delights that he gives them, which make them find heavenly doctrine sweet and agreeable, but, until this sweetness has engaged and fastened the will by its beloved bonds to draw it to the perfect acquiescence and consent of faith, as God does not fail to exercise his greatness upon us by his holy inspirations, so does not our enemy cease to practise his malice by temptations. And
meantime we remain in full liberty, to consent to the divine drawings or to reject them; for as the sacred Council of Trent has clearly decreed: "If any one should say that man's freewill, being moved and incited by God, does not in any way co-operate, by consenting to God, who moves and calls him that he may dispose and prepare himself to obtain the grace of justification, and that he is unable to refuse consent though he would," truly such a man would be excommunicated, and reproved by the
Church. But if we do not repulse the grace of holy love, it dilates itself by continual increase in our souls, until they are entirely converted; like great rivers, which finding open plains spread themselves, and ever take up more space.
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