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Vigils Reading -6th Sunday of Easter
May 5
A GREATER LOVE
By St Thomas More1
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Let us deeply consider the love of our Savior Christ who so loved his own
unto the end that for their sakes he willingly suffered that painful end, and
therein declared the highest degree of love that can be. For, as he himself says:
A greater love no one has than to give his life for his friends. This is indeed the
greatest love that ever anyone had. But yet had our Savior a greater love, for he
gave his life for both friend and foe.
But what a difference is there now, between this faithful love of his and
other kinds of false and fickle love found in this wretched world. The flatterer
pretends to love you because he dines well with you. But now if adversity so
diminishes your possessions that you find your table not laid, then – farewell,
adieu – your brother flatterer is gone and gets himself to some other table. And
he might even turn into your enemy and cruelly speak evil of you.
Who can in adversity be sure of many of his many friends when our Savior
himself was, at his capture, left alone and forsaken by his? When you go forth,
who will go with you? If you were a king would not all your realm send you on
your way alone and then forget you? Will not your own family let you depart a
naked, feeble soul, you know not whither?
Let us all in time, then, learn to love as we should, God above all things,
and all other things for him. And whatsoever love be not referred to that end,
namely, to the good pleasure of God, is a very vain and unfaithful love. And
whatsoever love we bear to any creature whereby we love God the less, that love
is a loathsome love and hinders us from heaven. Love no child of yours so
tenderly but that you could be content to sacrifice it to God, as Abraham was
ready with Isaac, if God so commanded you. And since God will not do so, offer
your child in another way to God’s service. For whatever we love that makes us
break God’s commandment, we love better than God, and that is a love deadly
and damnable. Now, since our Lord has so loved us, for our salvation, let us
diligently call for his grace that in return for his great love we be found not
ungrateful.
1 Journey with the Fathers – Year B – New City Press – 1999 – pg 58.3