Here is today’s Gospel, continuing St John chapter 15: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another’.

‘You did not choose me, but I chose you …’ St Augustine wrote: ‘You have not chosen me, He says, but I have chosen you. Grace such as that is ineffable. … How could He say, You have not chosen me, save only because His mercy anticipated us?’

His mercy indeed anticipates us. Indeed, it is always ready to receive, forgive, renew. May we love and trust His great mercy and grace in choosing us, and may God bless you this day.