We are reminded in the Gradual that nations as well as people are blessed by the Lord, wise words for our own time. Dear St. Paul, a prisoner , entreats the Christians to maintain charity and keep a bond of peace with each other, having presumably one Lord, one Catholic Faith, one common goal: Heaven. Based upon Our Lord’s own Words in the Gospel, we are commanded to love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind...and...thy neighbour as thyself.
The second portion of the two Commandments is the most difficult to maintain. We ask God to hear our prayers in the Offertory and for forgiveness of past sins in the Secret, an allusion to the Sacrament of Penance. It may not be self-evident, but the second of the Commandments, love of neighbour, prepares us to love God for as St. John Chrysostom comments, “Everyone who does evil hates the Light and never attains to the Light.” It may well be that modern Christians, rejecting much of the teaching of the Church, and filled with perversity, lukewarmness and hypocrisy, are assisting hell and the demons as pagans, many of whom are former Catholics, and unbelievers’ recoil from Christians who are filled with hatred, not love of God and neighbour.
The 27th is the Feast of SS Cosmas and Damian Mm., physicians, perhaps brothers who served the poor. Martyred in Cillicia, later their relics were taken to Rome and placed in the Temple of Romulus in the Roman Forum which had been converted into a Catholic Church. Their names are inscribed in the Venerable Roman Canon, and the priest makes a slight bow toward the Crucifix at their mention. Although not commemorated in the Mass, using the newer rubrics, perhaps a bow might be made in the Canon by the celebrant.