Love One Another
John the Apostle was the last one left.
One by one the apostles had died — most of them violently. Peter crucified upside down. Paul beheaded. James by the sword. John alone remained, an old man in Ephesus, too frail to walk.
His disciples carried him into the assembly on a stretcher.
The assembly was a house church — a small group of believers gathered in someone’s home, as Christians did in those first centuries. No grand buildings, no public ceremony. Just the faithful, crowded into a room, waiting on the word of the last living witness to Christ.
He could no longer preach. So every time they brought him in, he said the same thing:
“Little children, love one another.”
Week after week. The same words.
“Little children, love one another.”
His disciples finally asked him why he always said the same thing.
He answered:
“Because it is the commandment of the Lord, and if it alone is kept, it is enough.”
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St. Jerome records this tradition in his commentary on Paul’s letter to the Galatians (In Epistolam ad Galatas, on Galatians 6:10). St. Augustine references the same tradition in his homilies on the First Letter of John (In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos). Both treat it as received memory from the early church — not invention, but something remembered and passed down.
John 13:34. The upper room. The night before the cross. Jesus says: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
The old man in Ephesus, carried in on a stretcher, still saying the same thing.
It was enough then. It is enough now.
