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This I command you: Love one another
John. 15:17
Choose a hymn to settle the community into the service. The service is in four traditional parts of a Jewish service: the taking, the blessing, the breaking, and the giving.
The Taking:
Having gotten up late on a Friday morning, I find that a freight train is blocking the highway, so I miss my commuter train into the city. At such times I try to work on a scriptural reflection, but this day the command of Jesus to love one another seems too hard to hear. I put the scripture aside and count freight cars instead.
When I finally get on board the next train, someone gets up to give me a seat. A woman sits down next to me and smiles hello. Then I feel encouraged to do the same.
I am reminded of a short story I taught in English class about a beautiful apple that no one ate. The author received it as a gift from a doorman. It was so red and shiny that he gave it to his secretary to brighten her desk. At lunch she passed it on. All day the apple brought a lift to everyone who received it.
Perhaps that is one small way I can begin to keep the command to love. I can try to be kind in a small matter. And maybe someone will pass on the kindness too.
Marguerite Zralek, OP
Cast your mind over the past few days. Take one event that you think or feel made you more aware of the Presence of Love.
The Blessing:
Offer a Blessing in your heart for the gift you have received. Let us say aloud the blessing we have received and for those in our lives whom we wish to bless.
The Breaking: John 12:23-28, 31-32
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I solemnly assure you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.
But if it dies, it produces much fruit. The person who loves his life loses it, while the person who hates his life in this world preserves it to life eternal.
If anyone would serve me, let them follow me; where I am there will my servant be. If anyone serves me, my Father will honour them.
My soul is troubled now, yet what should I say-Father, save me from this hour? But it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!
I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.
Now has judgment come upon this world, now will this world’s prince be driven out, and I – once I am lifted up from earth — will draw all people to myself.
Pause now to consider how we as a group are being called to follow Jesus in "being lifted up today." How is that we are being broken? What is our Cross in union with His today?
How and where are we being broken open and are we in union with Him in that particular breaking.
The Giving:
‘Bread and all the memories that go with it.’
As the bread is passed, please take a piece and consume it. Pray quietly for the grace of union with Jesus. Bread of Life.
‘Wine and all the memories that go with it.’
As the wine is passed pleas take a sip and consume it.
Pray quietly for the grace of union with Jesus. Water and Wine are One.
Let us pray for the grace to be able to give in the way Jesus did.
John of the Cross put it this way:
My beloved, the mountains,
lonely wooded valleys,
thundering rivers,
the whisper of love, carried by the breeze.
The tranquil night
at one with the rising dawn,
the silence of music,
the mighty sound of solitude
the feast where love makes all new.
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Canticle A 13-14
Closing Hymn: Ubi Caritas et amor
Ubi caritas deus ibi est.
(Sing three times)
Br. Jack Mostyn (Rome)