Vigils Reading – 5th Sunday of Easter

A LOVE THAT

TRANSCENDS THE LAW

From a commentary by St Cyril of Alexandria

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I give you a new commandment, said Jesus: Love one another. But how,

we might ask, could he call this commandment new? Through Moses, he said to

the people of old: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with

all your mind. And your neighbor as yourself. Notice what follows. He was not

content simply to say, I give you a new commandment: love one another. He

showed the novelty of his command and how far the love he enjoined surpassed

the old conception of mutual love by going on immediately to add: Love one

another as I have loved you.

To understand the full force of these words, we have to consider how

Christ loved us. Then it will be easy to see what is new and different in the

commandment we are now given. Paul tells us that although his nature was

divine, he did not cling to his equality with God, but stripped himself of all

privilege to assume the condition of a slave. He became as we are, and

appearing in human form humbled himself by being obedient even to the

extent of dying on a cross. And elsewhere Paul writes: Though he was rich, he

became poor.

Do you not see what is new in Christ’s love for us? The law commanded

people to love their brothers and sisters as they love themselves, but our Lord

Jesus Christ loved us more than himself. He who was one in nature with God the

Father and his equal would not have descended to our lowly state, nor endured

in his flesh such a bitter death for us, nor submitted to the blows given him by

his enemies, to the shame, the derision, and all the other sufferings that could

not possibly have been enumerated, nor being rich, would he have become poor,

had he not loved us far more than himself. It was indeed something new for love

to go as far as that.

Christ commands us to love as he did, putting neither reputation, nor

wealth nor anything whatever before love of our brothers and sisters. If need be,

we must even be prepared to face death for our neighbor’s salvation as did our

Savior’s blessed disciples and those who followed in their footsteps. To them,

the salvation of others mattered more than their own lives and they were ready

to do anything or to suffer anything to save souls that were perishing. I die daily

, said Paul. Who suffers weakness without my suffering too? Who is made to

stumble without my heart blazing with indignation?

The Savior urged us to practice this love that transcends the law as the

foundation of true devotion to God. He knew that only in this way could we

become pleasing in God’s eyes, and that it was by seeking the beauty of the love

implanted in us by himself that we should attain to the higher blessings.