Love came down at Christmas

Today's saint, St John apostle and evangelist, reflected that love which came down at Christmas. He was the beloved disciple. The love he experienced he preached and practised.

The great love which this glorious saint bore to his God and Redeemer, and which he kindled from his master's divine breast, inspired him with the most vehement and generous charity for his neighbour. Without the sovereign love of God no one can please him. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity." "Let us therefore love God, because God first loved us." This is the first maxim in a spiritual life, which this apostle most tenderly inculcates. The second is that our fidelity in shunning all sin, and in keeping all God's commandments, is the proof of our love for God, but especially a sincere love for our neighbour is its great test. "For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not?" says St. John.

St. Jerome relates that when age and weakness grew upon him at Ephesus, so that he was no longer able to preach or make long discourses to the people, he used always to be carried to the assembly of the faithful by his disciples with great difficulty; and every time said to his flock only these words, "My dear children, love one another." When his auditors, wearied with hearing constantly the same thing, asked him why he always repeated the same words, he replied, "Because it is the precept of the Lord, and if you comply with it, you do enough ": an answer, says St. Jerome, worthy the great St. John, the favourite disciple of Christ, and which ought to be engraved in characters of gold, or rather to be written in the heart of every Christian.