7 May
May 7th, 2010
‘This is my commandment. Love one another as I have loved you’
John 15.12
Lord, we thank you for your unchanging love for each one of us. We ask you to fill us with your Spirit so that we may love you more and love others as you have loved us.
In his Last Supper discourse, Jesus speaks of peace and joy but he pays special attention to the virtue of love, telling his disciples that this is to be their trademark. St. John who heard these words
Wrote them in his Gospel and spent his whole life preaching the new commandment of love. Even his letters are full of the same message.
We are told that in his old age John’s sermons were short and repetitive ‘Little children, love one another. One day someone said to him. ‘You have told us that many times already, haven’t you anything new to say to us?’ John’s reply was spontaneous, ‘There is nothing else to say, everything is there, just love one another’.
In the Gospel John describes himself as the ‘beloved’ disciple – the one whom Jesus loved.
But didn’t Jesus love all his disciples? Of course he did. But John seems to have had a deeper knowledge, a more heartfelt experience of the Lord’s love for him, personally.
So during this Easter Season let us open our hearts more to God’s love and then we’ll be able to love others as he wants us to.
Prayer
The prayer for each day has been prepared by various members of the Holy Family Association. All who visit our website are remembered in prayer. If you would like us to pray for a particular need, simply complete and submit the form on the right hand side of this page. You may wish to leave a comment in the space below.
Just a Thought
How the Holy Family prayer: A Reflection by Pope Benedict XVI
“I would like to invite you to reflect on the place of prayer in the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The home of Nazareth, in fact, is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to ponder and to penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.
Pope Paul VI during his visit to Nazareth said “we come to understand the need for a spiritual discipline, if we wish to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ.” And he added: “First, it teaches us silence. Oh! That there would be reborn in us the esteem for silence, that wonderful and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are deafened by so many noises, sounds and clamorous voices in the frantic and tumultuous times of modern life. Oh! Silence of Nazareth, teach us to be resolute in good thoughts, intent upon the interior life, ready to listen well to the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of the true masters.”
We can glean several insights on the Holy Family’s prayer and relationship with God from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ childhood. We may begin with the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph, “when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, brought the child up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord”(2:22). Like every observant Jewish family, Jesus’ parents go up to the temple to consecrate the firstborn son to God and to offer sacrifice. Moved by fidelity to the law’s prescriptions, they set off from Bethlehem and go up to Jerusalem with Jesus, who is now forty days old. Instead of a one-year-old lamb, they present the offering of simple families; that is two young pigeons. The Holy Family’s pilgrimage is one of faith, of the offering of gifts, a symbol of prayer, and of encounter with the Lord, whom Mary and Joseph already see in the son Jesus.”
