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“As my Father has loved me, so do love I you. The grace of a Mediator is expressed here; and Christ isMediator between God and man, not as God, but as man.” (St. Augustine)
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“Even as I have kept my Father’s commandments. The Apostle makes clear what thesecommandments were: Christ became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). (Alcuin)
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“But when all of our Lord’s sacred discourses are full of his commandments, why does he give thisspecial commandment respecting love, if it is not that every commandment teaches love and allprecepts are one? Love and love only is the fulfillment of everything that is enjoined. As all theboughs of a tree proceed from one root, so all the virtues are produced form one love. Nor has thebranch, i.e. the good work, any life, unless it abide in the root of love.” (St. Gregory the Great)5.
Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars
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Bringing together today’s themes in his own life, St. Francis Xavier understood his missionary activityas the task of bringing Christ’s love to the nations.
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The Church’s mystics (“I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heardfrom my Father”), missionaries (“[I] chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that willremain”), and martyrs (“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”) allfind their justification and consolation in today’s Gospel.
6.
Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI
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“The essence of Christianity is not an idea but a Person. Great theologians have tried to describe theessential ideas that make up Christianity. But in the end, the Christianity that they constructed was notconvincing, because Christianity is in the first place an Event, a Person. And thus in the Person wediscover the richness of what is contained.”
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“The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor is emphasized. One is so closelyconnected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbor orhate him altogether. Saint John’s words should rather be interpreted to mean that love of neighbor is apath that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us toGod.”
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“God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible. God loved us first. . .and this love of God has appeared in our midst. He has become visible in as much as he ‘has sent hisonly Son into the world, so that we might live through him’ (
1 Jn
4:9). God has made himself visible:in Jesus we are able to see the Father (cf.
Jn
14:9).”
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“God is visible in a number of ways. In the love-story recounted by the Bible, he comes towards us, heseeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last Supper, to the piercing of his heart on the Cross, to hisappearances after the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of theApostles, he guided the nascent Church along its path. Nor has the Lord been absent from subsequentChurch history: he encounters us ever anew, in the men and women who reflect his presence, in hisword, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist. In the Church’s Liturgy, in her prayer, in theliving community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thuslearn to recognize that presence in our daily lives.”
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“He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does notdemand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us seeand experience his love, and since he has ‘loved us first,’ love can also blossom as a response withinus.”
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