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Friday of the Fifth week of Easter

Commentary of the day
Saint Clement of Rome, Pope from 90 to about 100
First epistle to the Corinthians, 49 (trans. breviary Tuesday of the 2nd week of the year, alt.)

"This is my commandment: love one another as I love you"

If there is true Christian love in a man, let him carry out the precepts of Christ. Who can describe the co nstraining power of a love for God? (cf. Col 3,14) Its majesty and its beauty who can adequately express? No tongue can tell the heights to which love can· uplift us. Love binds us fast to God. “Love casts a veil over sins innumerable” (1Pt 4,8). There are no limits to love's endurance, no end to its patience. Love is without servility, as it is without arrogance. Love knows of no divisions, promotes no discord; all the works of love are done in perfect fellowship. It was in love that all God's chosen saints were made perfect; for without love nothing is pleasing to him. It was in love that the Lord drew us to himself; because of the love he· bore us, our Lord Jesus Christ, at the will of God, gave his blood for us, his flesh for our flesh, his life for our lives.

See then, dear friends, what a great and wondrous thing love is. Its perfection is beyond all words. Who is fit to be called its possessor, but those whom God deems worthy? Let us beg and implore of his mercy that we may be purged of all earthly preferences for this man or that, and be found faultless in love. Though every generation from Adam to the present day has passed from the earth, yet such of them as by God's grace were perfected in love have their place now in the courts of the godly, and at the visitation of Christ's kingdom they will be openly revealed...

My friends, if we keep God's commandments in a true loving comradeship together, so that our sins may be forgiven for that love's sake, we are blessed indeed.