Sermon, 6th Sunday after Trinity, 2025
We continue this Sunday to preach through the first book of homilies. The sixth homily is entitled:
A Sermon of Christian Love and Charity
These sermons have been edited to shorten them and to update the language, with the intent of maintaining the content, or at least the core meaning. The original texts of the homilies can be found in the manuscripts after the edited text that were preached. For background on these homilies, see the links below.
The 6th homily directs us to look to Jesus as the example of how we are to love. First, we are to love God above everything else, and this means that we must always obey God and to submit ourselves to His will for us. Second we are to love others, not just our friends and those who are kind to us, but also our enemies. We must be quick to forgive others who have wronged us in small, or even in large, ways. Finally, the homily makes a distinction between how we interact with offenders on a personal level and how the representatives interact with criminals who have offended against society. Magistrates must uphold the law in punishing criminals, but we must not hold grudges against those who cross us.