Photo was taken yesterday near Millstreet, Co.Cork (Irl)

I know you can hardly see them as they were flying so high up but they are a pair of swallows. It was my first 2016 sighting of them yesterday around 5pm. It is a sign that summer is just around the corner when they arrive. More fascinating is the fact that they have traveled thousands of kilometers from South Africa, to arrive safely home near Millstreet, Co.Cork. I am sure there will be other sightings of the arrival of the swallow in your area very soon!

Thought on Sunday – April – 24/04/2016

Thought For Today is by Jane Mellett

A New Commandment
In today’s Gospel Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment – to love one another. When we truly love one another, we are experiencing something of the divine as love comes from God, love is God and God is love. Surely Jesus’s command to love one another was nothing new for the disciples and those of their time; the commandment is well known in the Old Testament. But the love Jesus asks of the disciples here (and of us) is to love as he has loved, and that is a controversial love for some.

It is controversial because Jesus’s love is without restrictions and without exclusion. It is a love of those we may not like, a love of those it is hard to love. This love was too radical for some of the religious leaders of Jesus’s time and ultimately led to his death. This radically inclusive love is sometimes too much for Christians today also, to love the sinner, to love those on the extreme margins of our society, to love those who have hurt us, to welcome back those who have done wrong, to include all at the table. Let us hear those words of the Gospel more clearly today: ‘love one another, just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.’ We can dream and work towards a world where this is a reality.