Prof. Msgr. Vladimir Felzmann aka Father Vlad 

still working to help God make this World a better place 

“love one another; just as I have loved you.”

In the Original Testament, we have in Lev 19,18, “love your neighbour as yourself.” What makes this a new commandment is its ‘just as I have loved you’. Jesus loves us more than he loves himself. He was prepared to give his life for us.

Jesus’s example elevates love to a new level of intensity and depth.He calls for a love that is not merely neighbourly, but a love that mirrors his own selfless love which includes not just his friends and neighbours but everyone.

It is a love that is willing to spend time , thought and energies, for the sake of others.

It is an invitation to transformation.We are invited – indeed directed – to love others as Jesus loved his contemporaries in his thoughts, words, and actions.

Not easy when you see - and meet people – who are ‘not one of us.’

PopeGregory the Great chose Augustine in 595 to lead a group of missionaries to convert King Æthelberht and his Kingdom of Kent from Anglo-Saxon paganism.

Augustine and his companions, on their way to Britain, soon after leaving Rome, halted, daunted by the nature of the task before them The English were not ‘one of use’. They sent Augustine back to Rome to request papal permission to return. Gregory refused and sent Augustine back with letters encouraging the missionaries to persevere. They did. They gave their lives in the service of Jesus Christ and his Church. Augustine – a foreigner, ‘not one of us’ - became archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the “Apostle to the English”. A Saint.