Reading I Acts 14:21-27 After Paul and Barnabas had proclaimed the good news to that city and made a considerable number of disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith, saying, “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” They appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, commended them to the Lord in whom they had put their faith. Then they traveled through Pisidia and reached Pamphylia. After proclaiming the word at Perga they went down to Attalia. From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now accomplished. And when they arrived, they called the church together and reported what God had done with them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13 R (cf. 1) I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. or: R Alleluia. The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. R I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. or: R Alleluia. Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD, and let your faithful ones bless you. Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might. R I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. or: R Alleluia. Let them make known your might to the children of Adam, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is a kingdom for all ages, and your dominion endures through all generations. R I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. or: R Alleluia.
Reading II Rev 21:1-5a Then I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.”
The One who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
Alleluia Jn 13:34 R. Alleluia, alleluia. I give you a new commandment, says the Lord: love one another as I have loved you. R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35 When Judas had left them, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and God will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER Today too, many people, often without saying so, implicitly would like to “see Jesus”, to meet him, to know him. This is how we understand the great responsibility we Christians and of our communities have. We too must respond with the witness of a life that is given in service, a life that takes upon itself the style of God – closeness, compassion and tenderness – and is given in service. It means sowing seeds of love, not with fleeting words but through concrete, simple and courageous examples, not with theoretical condemnations, but with gestures of love. Precisely then, in trials and in solitude, while the seed is dying, that is the moment in which life blossoms, to bear ripe fruit in due time. It is in this intertwining of death and life that we can experience the joy and true fruitfulness of love, which always, I repeat, is given in God’s style: closeness, compassion, tenderness. (Angelus, 21 March 2021)
Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) founder of the Missionary Sisters of Charity
"As I have loved you, love one another. I always say that love begins at home: first in your family and then in your city. It's easy to pretend to love people who are far away, but much less easy to love those who live with us or close to us. I am wary of big impersonal projects: love must begin with a person. In order to love someone, you have to meet him, to get close to him. Everyone needs love. All human beings need to know that they are important to others and that they are of inestimable value before God.
Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you. He also said: "Whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me" (Mt 25:40). So it is He whom we love in every poor person. He said, "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was naked and you clothed me" (Mt 25:35). I always remind my sisters and brothers that our day consists of twenty-four hours with Jesus.
FAUSTI - The story shows that Jesus does not suffer the Passion, but directs it consciously and freely. If the strength of evil unleashes its destructive violence against Him, the Lord directs it to accomplish His work. It is just here that the revelation of His Glory begins. It is a story that faces our deepest questions: perdition and salvation, hatred and love, the freedom of man and the grace of God, our responsibility and its governance over history. The answer is not given in words, but by new facts which, from a higher perspective, open the way to a still unpublished composition of these dilemmas. "Now the Son of Man was glorified and God was glorified in Him", says Jesus after giving the morsel to Judas, who goes out into the night. This " now" marks the beginning of the " hour " of the glorification of the Son of Man, in which the head of this world is expelled and we finally know "I Am".For Him our perdition becomes a reason to save us and an opportunity to reveal Himself. Jesus, revealing the betrayal, does not intend to denounce the traitor, but instead He offers him His own friendship,even if He knows his negative answer. Jesus, revealing the betrayal, does not intend to denounce the traitor, but instead offers him His friendship, even knowing that he rejects it. In this way He shows his fidelity to his unfaithful friend, in the gratuity of a love that knows no conditions or conditioning. Jesus loves Judas and gives His life for him who betrays Him. After having washed his feet, He made a further gesture of love and communion towards him. It is precisely in his refusal that Scripture is fulfilled and glory is revealed. God is gratuitous Love for every lost person. "I give you a new Commandment: love one another as I have loved you", Jesus says to the disciples. Jesus not only prescribes, but gives a new Commandment. It is not an imposition, but a gift that makes us live our reality as sons and brothers; and it is new because we see for the first time a God who washes our feet and gives us Himself. The cross of Jesus is the exaltation of God as Love stronger than death. This is the definitive exorcism that frees us from all evil. John does not narrate exorcisms, because the narration of the Gospel itself is the exorcism par excellence, which unmasks the lies of the evil one, revealing to man the infinite Love of God for him. We love only if we know that we are loved: we can love because He first loved us. When He says to us that we love "how" He loved us, the adverb "how" indicates not only the way: His love for us, as well as a model, is the source of our mutual love.Love one another as I have loved you" can be translated as "Love one another with the same love with which I have loved you". It is a gift that Jesus leaves to His own: it is His own Life, to be cultivated and guarded. If the flesh of the Son of man raised reveals the glory of God Love, God too will glorify the flesh of the Son of man; and He will glorify it "immediately", on the third day, that of the Resurrection, His and ours. The sign of recognition, evident to all, of the new people and of its election is the mutual love of this type, open to every man, beginning with the enemies. Love is a universal language, comprehensible to every man. We all exist as loved ones and we become adults by being able to love. The fraternal love among us makes the Glory of the Father shine on earth. The life of God circulates in us, Love between Father and Son, offered by the Son to every brother. For this reason, those who do not love their brother are still in death, but, since they are loved by their brothers and sisters with the Love of the Son, they can return to life as Lazarus, the friend whom Jesus loved. In this fraternal love everyone knows what it means to be a disciple of the Son. And everyone will see Him on our face if we love in this way.
Christ's love makes hope blossom Father Ermes Ronchi
Jn 13:31-35 If we look for Jesus' unmistakable signature, his exclusive mark, we find it in these Words. A few verses, recorded during the Last Supper, when for the only time in the gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, "Little children," he uses a special, affectionate word, full of tenderness: little children, my children.
"I give you a new commandment: as I have loved you so love one another." Endless words, which we go into as though at heart's tip, holding our breath. Loving. But what does it mean to love, how do we do it?
Behind our loving stutters is the loss of contact with him, with Jesus. We are helped by today's gospel. The Bible is a library on the art of loving. And here we are perhaps at the central chapter. And indeed here is Jesus adding: love one another as I have loved you.
Love has a how, before it has a what, an object. The novelty is here, not in the verb, but in the adverb. Jesus does not simply say "love." It is not enough to love; it could be only a form of dependence on the other, or fear of abandonment, a love that uses the partner, or made only of sacrifice. There are also violent and desperate loves. Unhappy and even destructive loves.
As I have loved you. Jesus uses verbs in the past tense: look at what I have done, he doesn't speak of the future, not of the cross that also already stands out, He talks about the lived chronicle. Just lived. We are in the setting of the Last Supper, when Jesus, in His creativity, invents gestures never before seen: the Master washing the feet in the gesture of the slave or of the woman. He also offers the bread to Judas, who took it and went out. And he sinks into the night. God is love that offers himself even to the betrayer, and to the last he calls him friend. It is not sentimental love that of Jesus, He is the untold tale of the Father's tenderness; He loves with deeds, with His hands, concretely: He does it first, at a loss, without counting.
It is intelligent love, which sees first, deeper, farther. In Simon of John, the fisherman, He sees the Rock; in Mary of Magdala, the woman of the seven demons, He intuits the one who will speak to the angels; in Zacchaeus, the enriched thief, He sees the most generous man in Jericho.
Love that reads the springtime of the heart, though within a hundred winters! That draws out of each the best of what he can become: whole fountains of hope and freedom; draws out the butterfly from the caterpillar I thought I was. In what does glory consist, evoked five times in
two verses, the glory for each of us? Man's glory, and God's own glory consists in loving. There is nothing else to boast about. Therein lies the success of life. Its truth. "The revealed truth is love" (Fr. Florensk
Reading I
RispondiEliminaActs 14:21-27
After Paul and Barnabas had proclaimed the good news
to that city
and made a considerable number of disciples,
they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch.
They strengthened the spirits of the disciples
and exhorted them to persevere in the faith, saying,
“It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships
to enter the kingdom of God.”
They appointed elders for them in each church and,
with prayer and fasting, commended them to the Lord
in whom they had put their faith.
Then they traveled through Pisidia and reached Pamphylia.
After proclaiming the word at Perga they went down to Attalia.
From there they sailed to Antioch,
where they had been commended to the grace of God
for the work they had now accomplished.
And when they arrived, they called the church together
and reported what God had done with them
and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13
R (cf. 1) I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R Alleluia.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R Alleluia.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might.
R I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R Alleluia.
Let them make known your might to the children of Adam,
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
Your kingdom is a kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R Alleluia.
Reading II
Rev 21:1-5a
Then I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth.
The former heaven and the former earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more.
I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people
and God himself will always be with them as their God.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes,
and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain,
for the old order has passed away.”
The One who sat on the throne said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”
Alleluia
Jn 13:34
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I give you a new commandment, says the Lord:
love one another as I have loved you.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
When Judas had left them, Jesus said,
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself,
and God will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
RispondiEliminaToday too, many people, often without saying so, implicitly would like to “see Jesus”, to meet him, to know him. This is how we understand the great responsibility we Christians and of our communities have. We too must respond with the witness of a life that is given in service, a life that takes upon itself the style of God – closeness, compassion and tenderness – and is given in service. It means sowing seeds of love, not with fleeting words but through concrete, simple and courageous examples, not with theoretical condemnations, but with gestures of love. Precisely then, in trials and in solitude, while the seed is dying, that is the moment in which life blossoms, to bear ripe fruit in due time. It is in this intertwining of death and life that we can experience the joy and true fruitfulness of love, which always, I repeat, is given in God’s style: closeness, compassion, tenderness. (Angelus, 21 March 2021)
Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
RispondiEliminafounder of the Missionary Sisters of Charity
"As I have loved you, love one another.
I always say that love begins at home: first in your family and then in your city. It's easy to pretend to love people who are far away, but much less easy to love those who live with us or close to us. I am wary of big impersonal projects: love must begin with a person. In order to love someone, you have to meet him, to get close to him. Everyone needs love. All human beings need to know that they are important to others and that they are of inestimable value before God.
Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you. He also said: "Whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me" (Mt 25:40). So it is He whom we love in every poor person. He said, "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was naked and you clothed me" (Mt 25:35). I always remind my sisters and brothers that our day consists of twenty-four hours with Jesus.
FAUSTI - The story shows that Jesus does not suffer the Passion, but directs it consciously and freely. If the strength of evil unleashes its destructive violence against Him, the Lord directs it to accomplish His work. It is just here that the revelation of His Glory begins.
RispondiEliminaIt is a story that faces our deepest questions: perdition and salvation, hatred and love, the freedom of man and the grace of God, our responsibility and its governance over history. The answer is not given in words, but by new facts which, from a higher perspective, open the way to a still unpublished composition of these dilemmas.
"Now the Son of Man was glorified and God was glorified in Him", says Jesus after giving the morsel to Judas, who goes out into the night.
This " now" marks the beginning of the " hour " of the glorification of the Son of Man, in which the head of this world is expelled and we finally know
"I Am".For Him our perdition becomes a reason to save us and an opportunity to reveal Himself.
Jesus, revealing the betrayal, does not intend to denounce the traitor, but instead He offers him His own friendship,even if He knows his negative answer.
Jesus, revealing the betrayal, does not intend to denounce the traitor, but instead offers him His friendship, even knowing that he rejects it.
In this way He shows his fidelity to his unfaithful friend, in the gratuity of a love that knows no conditions or conditioning.
Jesus loves Judas and gives His life for him who betrays Him.
After having washed his feet, He made a further gesture of love and communion towards him. It is precisely in his refusal that Scripture is fulfilled and glory is revealed.
God is gratuitous Love for every lost person.
"I give you a new Commandment: love one another as I have loved you", Jesus says to the disciples.
Jesus not only prescribes, but gives a new Commandment.
It is not an imposition, but a gift that makes us live our reality as sons and brothers; and it is new because we see for the first time a God who washes our feet and gives us Himself.
The cross of Jesus is the exaltation of God as Love stronger than death.
This is the definitive exorcism that frees us from all evil.
John does not narrate exorcisms, because the narration of the Gospel itself is the exorcism par excellence, which unmasks the lies of the evil one, revealing to man the infinite Love of God for him.
We love only if we know that we are loved: we can love because He first loved us.
When He says to us that we love "how" He loved us, the adverb "how" indicates not only the way: His love for us, as well as a model, is the source of our mutual love.Love one another as I have loved you" can be translated as "Love one another with the same love with which I have loved you".
It is a gift that Jesus leaves to His own: it is His own Life, to be cultivated and guarded.
If the flesh of the Son of man raised reveals the glory of God Love, God too will glorify the flesh of the Son of man; and He will glorify it "immediately", on the third day, that of the Resurrection, His and ours.
The sign of recognition, evident to all, of the new people and of its election is the mutual love of this type, open to every man, beginning with the enemies. Love is a universal language, comprehensible to every man.
We all exist as loved ones and we become adults by being able to love.
The fraternal love among us makes the Glory of the Father shine on earth. The life of God circulates in us, Love between Father and Son, offered by the Son to every brother.
For this reason, those who do not love their brother are still in death, but, since they are loved by their brothers and sisters with the Love of the Son, they can return to life as Lazarus, the friend whom Jesus loved.
In this fraternal love everyone knows what it means to be a disciple of the Son.
And everyone will see Him on our face if we love in this way.
Christ's love makes hope blossom
RispondiEliminaFather Ermes Ronchi
Jn 13:31-35
If we look for Jesus' unmistakable signature, his exclusive mark, we find it in these Words. A few verses, recorded during the Last Supper, when for the only time in the gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, "Little children," he uses a special, affectionate word, full of tenderness: little children, my children.
"I give you a new commandment: as I have loved you so love one another." Endless words, which we go into as though at heart's tip, holding our breath.
Loving. But what does it mean to love, how do we do it?
Behind our loving stutters is the loss of contact with him, with Jesus. We are helped by today's gospel. The Bible is a library on the art of loving. And here we are perhaps at the central chapter. And indeed here is Jesus adding: love one another as I have loved you.
Love has a how, before it has a what, an object. The novelty is here, not in the verb, but in the adverb. Jesus does not simply say "love." It is not enough to love; it could be only a form of dependence on the other, or fear of abandonment, a love that uses the partner, or made only of sacrifice. There are also violent and desperate loves. Unhappy and even destructive loves.
As I have loved you. Jesus uses verbs in the past tense: look at what I have done, he doesn't speak of the future, not of the cross that also already stands out, He talks about the lived chronicle. Just lived. We are in the setting of the Last Supper, when Jesus, in His creativity, invents gestures never before seen: the Master washing the feet in the gesture of the slave or of the woman. He also offers the bread to Judas, who took it and went out. And he sinks into the night. God is love that offers himself even to the betrayer, and to the last he calls him friend. It is not sentimental love that of Jesus, He is the untold tale of the Father's tenderness; He loves with deeds, with His hands, concretely: He does it first, at a loss, without counting.
It is intelligent love, which sees first, deeper, farther. In Simon of John, the fisherman, He sees the Rock; in Mary of Magdala, the woman of the seven demons, He intuits the one who will speak to the angels; in Zacchaeus, the enriched thief, He sees the most generous man in Jericho.
Love that reads the springtime of the heart, though within a hundred winters! That draws out of each the best of what he can become: whole fountains of hope and freedom; draws out the butterfly from the caterpillar I thought I was. In what does glory consist, evoked five times in
two verses, the glory for each of us? Man's glory, and God's own glory consists in loving. There is nothing else to boast about. Therein lies the success of life. Its truth.
"The revealed truth is love" (Fr. Florensk