Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter
When I was a student at Texas A&M, I remember being taken by a plaque listing alumni who had been killed in military service, with the words from today’s gospel at the top: “no one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn. 15:13). To give up one’s life is a powerful testament of love, and martyrs have always held a place of honor in the Church. Everything they have, they have sacrificed out of love.
What the martyrs have done, we can do also. The martyrs put love of others before their own personal plans. Pope Francis has recently praised those who “who prefer to praise others rather than boast about themselves, or who choose the less welcome tasks, at times even choosing to bear an injustice so as to offer it to the Lord.” There are many ways to suffer out of love, or put aside our own desires to lift up someone else. It does not look as dramatic as a bloody martyrdom, but the spirit of sacrifice is no less real. We are all called to sacrifice out of love—what will yours be today?