Today, we are observing the 5th Sunday of Easter (John 13:31-35).
"'I give you a new commandment', said Jesus: 'love one another.' But how, we may ask, could he call this commandment new? Through Moses, he had 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.'...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.'...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 estate, 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 be enumerated; nor, being rich, would have he become poor, had he not loved us far more than himself. It was indeed something new for love to go as far as that!"
Saint Cyril of Alexandria
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