{"id":4001,"date":"2025-06-02T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/?p=4001"},"modified":"2025-06-01T17:33:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T17:33:24","slug":"living-in-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/2025\/06\/02\/living-in-love\/benedictine-spirituality\/4001\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in love."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Noorulabdeen Ahmad on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m reflecting on the first letter of St John. We\u2019ve been listening to it throughout Eastertide, now as we move towards Pentecost its message has a particular resonance. St John takes us to the very heart of the gospel, to the relationship of love that both calls and sustains us wherever life leads us. He writes:

\u201cMy dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us and God will be complete in us.\u201d<\/em>

He makes a very clear connection between God\u2019s love for us and our love for one another. The love he speaks of is life changing, life enhancing and challenging. It\u2019s not a love of fine sentiments. It asks us to imitate the faithful love God lavishes on us. It requires commitment and sacrifice. It\u2019s a love that doesn\u2019t give up when it\u2019s hard or painful.

As St Benedict reminds us this love calls us to consider first what is best for the other rather than for ourselves. We have to recommit ourselves daily to this love. Sometimes that proves easier in the big challenges we face than in the small interactions of daily life which can feel so mundane and irritating.

It can feel like such love is beyond our human capacity, and in many ways it is. It is only when we are able to know and accept ourselves as truly and unconditionally loved by God that we find the qualities we need to reach out and offer love to those around us.

As we move towards Pentecost it\u2019s worth remembering that our capacity to love relies on us abiding in God\u2019s love so that we can carry it with us to a world in need.

How are you being called to live in and share God\u2019s love this Eastertide?
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I\u2019m reflecting on the first letter of St John. We\u2019ve been listening to it throughout Eastertide, now as we move towards Pentecost its message has a particular resonance. St John takes us to the very heart of the gospel, to the relationship of love that both calls and sustains us wherever life leads us. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,494,544,461,359,271,537,362,246],"tags":[28,18,53,223,448,125,6,8,33,229,13,29,15,161,88,478,10],"class_list":["post-4001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benedictine-spirituality","category-christ","category-discernment","category-divine-office","category-eastertide","category-lectio-divina","category-liturgy","category-resurrection","category-scripture","tag-benedictine","tag-challenge","tag-christ","tag-christlike","tag-discipleship","tag-eastertide","tag-gospel","tag-hope","tag-kingdom","tag-kingdomvalues","tag-lectiodivina","tag-love","tag-newlife","tag-pentecost","tag-stbenedict","tag-stjohn","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4005,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions\/4005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}