Feria Secunda infra Hebdomadam I post Octavam Pentecostes
“Caritas ex Deo est – Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”
As we move liturgically into the time after Pentecost—a sacred season the Church Fathers likened to the long spiritual labor of the Church in the world—we encounter in the Monday readings a compelling harmony between St. John’s exhortation to charity and Our Lord’s teaching on mercy from St. Luke’s Gospel.
The Bond of Charity and the Measure of Mercy
1 John 4:8–21 opens with a thunderous claim: “He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is charity.” St. Augustine, meditating on this epistle, wrote: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity” (Tract. in Ep. Ioan. 7.6). Love—caritas—is not merely an attribute of God, but His very essence. The Incarnation, Passion, and abiding presence of the Holy Ghost are all acts of divine love made manifest, and Pentecost itself is the pouring out of this love upon the Church.
But this love demands a human response. “If God hath so loved us,” St. John writes, “we ought also to love one another.” This is not sentimental benevolence, but a theological act, a reflection of divine charity. The Apostle insists that this love is perfected in us when God abides in us—et caritas ejus perfecta est in nobis (v. 12). St. Gregory the Great observed that “the proof of love is in the works” (Hom. in Evang. 30). Thus, we cannot claim to love God if we do not love our brother; the unseen God is made visible in the face of the other.
Luke 6:36–42 complements this theology of love with a summons to mercy. “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” This is the measure with which we shall be measured. St. Ambrose, in his commentary on this passage, draws out the severity and sweetness of divine mercy: “Mercy, not judgment, is the hallmark of divine likeness in man” (Expositio Evang. sec. Lucam, lib. V). When we judge, condemn, or withhold forgiveness, we are not merely failing in human kindness; we obscure the image of God within us.
The Lord continues with a caution: “Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?” Here we are warned not only against hypocrisy, but against spiritual blindness born of pride. The image of the mote and the beam is a vivid admonition to self-examination before correction of others. St. Cyril of Alexandria notes that we often judge others harshly “because we are unwilling to see our own sins, and so we exaggerate the faults of others” (In Lucam, Hom. 42).
The Spirit of Pentecost in the Daily Struggle
During this Hebdomada I post Octavam Pentecostes, the Church begins her long march through the Tempus per Annum, the time after Pentecost, adorned in green—a sign of hope and spiritual growth. Yet growth is impossible without the labor of love and the cultivation of mercy. These two readings set before us the essential Christian vocation: to love as God has loved, and to show mercy as God is merciful.
Pentecost was not the end of the story, but the beginning of the Church’s mission. And the Holy Ghost, given not in abstract but as a Spiritus caritatis, remains with us to transform hearts from judgment to mercy, from self-love to divine charity. As St. John Chrysostom preached: “He who has received the Spirit must show it by his works. Let no one think that words suffice.” (Hom. on Acts 1).
Let us then, in the spirit of this sacred time, beg the grace to love our brother, to forgive from the heart, and to see in every soul—even the one who wrongs us—the image of the God who is Love. The Church, born of fire and love at Pentecost, walks now the green path of sanctity. May we, as her children, walk it not only with words on our lips, but mercy in our hands and charity in our hearts.
Suggested Spiritual Exercise:
On this feria, read slowly 1 John 4:7–21, then pray the Litany of the Holy Ghost, asking especially for the gift of pietas—that tender filial love which moves us to mercy and to love all as children of the same Father.
Veni Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.