St. Patrick's Day has been celebrated on March 17 for fifteen hundred years since it is the day that Patrick, the missionary bishop who evangelized Ireland, passed from this world to eternity. This excerpt from his autobiographical work called the Confession makes clear that...
The famous parable of the Good Samaritan shows that mercy and compassion are not always convenient, and that love of neighbor can't be limited to those like us...
Hear O Israel! Most have heard of the Great Commandment - to love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself. But if God is just and salvation depends upon perfect obedience to this command, who can be saved?...
When his enemies quiz him about what commandment is the greatest, Jesus reveals just how radical he really is. His answer goes to the very root of every single one of the 613 commandments found in the law of the Old Testament - the distinct...
Robert Bellarmine, reflecting on Jesus' statement in Matthew 11:30 that "my yoke is easy, my burden light," explains it in terms of love of God and the joy and happiness that it produces, in this life, and eternally. For September 17, his feast day....
Clement of Rome, writing about thirty years after the martyrdom of St. Paul, affirms the Pauline balance - we are justified by faith and yet it is God's will that we perform good works of love, in abundance. He illustrates his point by many...
These words from Gregory the Great's Moral Reflections on Job extols how the law of the Lord is manifold in that it includes all the virtues which find their perfection in love. Here he especially comments on Paul's ode to love in I Corinthians 13. How...
Aelred of Rievaulx on Jesus Christ as the model of brotherly love and patience through his forgiveness of persecutors and enemies and his prayer from the cross "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."...
Augustine on the divine love, known as charity, caritas, agape, that Jesus commanded us to have for one another in the last supper discourse of the Gospel of John. This sort of love is impossible for human beings without the help of grace -- it...
Aelred, a medieval abbot, here discusses the nature of true spiritual friendship as modeled by Jonathan's loyalty to his friend David, despite his father Saul's attempt to use jealousy and envy to divide them. [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='100' color='' background_color='' border_color='']T[/dropcaps]hat outstanding youth, Jonathan, son of King...