Scripture’s powerful messages about love offer a number of opportunities for reflection.

Today is Mother’s Day. An appropriate day to consider the ultimate possibilities of love. Through the centuries, women take the risk of love to bring children into the world.

I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love.

On this Mother’s Day the scriptures remind us that God is loving and calls us to love in the same way. God’s love comes to us through Jesus. Like a mother’s love it conquers even death itself. And nothing we possess, not even the most precious memento, can come close in value.

In prayer we ask for the grace to obey God’s command to love, and for mercy when we do not.

To know someone is to love them, the old saying goes, but as scripture points out in so many words, the reverse is also true: To love is to know.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others. —John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)