examination of the heart 472 [f.152r] PART III Meditations for the Commons FOR THE FEASTS OF THE APOSTLES OUTSIDE OF AND IN PASCHAL TIME Before Holy Communion 1. “This is [M]y commandment, that you love one another” (Jn 15:12). Consider that no community can endure without love. For this reason, Jesus wanted to compel the apostles to mutual love, not only through exhortations, but even giving a commandment. Just as the parts of human body live in harmony with one another, constantly helping and serving each other; likewise, the people in God’s Church and in any Order, Congregation, and Society, of which they are constituents, as if the parts of a body, should together manifest mutual love and render service to each other. Realize, therefore, that you have as much perfection in you as you have love. 2. Consider that he who does not abound in love for his neighbor does not abound in love for God. In a certain way, the love of God depends on love for human beings. For if we have no love for a human being, whom we have before our eyes and whom we see shaped in all respects in the same image as we are, how can we love God, whose likeness we do not see (cf. 1 Jn 4:20), and whose essence we do not comprehend? Hence, a certain man rightly exhorts: “All people should be loved with a true love. And there is no reason for you to hate someone else on account of some
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