5TH SUNDAY OF EASTER

In today’s Gospel, we are told to love one another. We don’t usually think of that command as applying to the animal kingdom, but God made animals with the same loyalties and instincts we experience. Such loyalty was demonstrated last spring when elephants seemed to grieve over the death of the man who had saved them from poachers a decade before. Conservationist Lawrence Anthony gave sanctuary to two herds of wild elephants, taking them onto his 5,000 acre game preserve. He became known as the “Elephant Whisperer.” When Anthony died, elephants came from miles away to his compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu, apparently to pay their respects to the man who had cared for them.
Deacon Dick Folger