Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 148
Reading 1
Thus says the LORD:
"You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry.
My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword;
then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.
"If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people,
you shall not act like an extortioner toward him
by demanding interest from him.
If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge,
you shall return it to him before sunset;
for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.
What else has he to sleep in?
If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."
Responsorial Psalm
R. (2) I love you, Lord, my strength.
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
The LORD lives and blessed be my rock!
Extolled be God my savior.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
Reading 2
Brothers and sisters:
You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord,
receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit,
so that you became a model for all the believers
in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth
not only in Macedonia and in Achaia,
but in every place your faith in God has gone forth,
so that we have no need to say anything.
For they themselves openly declare about us
what sort of reception we had among you,
and how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord,
and my Father will love him and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
Loving God in everything that we say and do in our lives can never lead us to doing anything wrong. God, being the ultimate good and our creator, means that whatever we do with Him will also espouse that goodness. There is no evil in good. There is no bad that comes from good. We are invited into a relationship with God for a simple purpose: to love God and to be good. Good begets good. Evil begets evil. When we ignore God we are actually promoting evil and only bad things can result. Keeping our focus on God will influence all of our relationships and actions; all of them will lead to good things and bear fruit. All of us have been created with an innate knowledge of what is good and what is bad. This is something that is not taught but is a natural part of our being. Realizing the difference between what is right and what is wrong is an awakening of sorts that happens to every human being. It is called the Age of Reason. Some would argue it is proof of the existence of God. We have to look no further than the wantonness of people to do good as proof enough that there is a God and He is the ultimate good.
To love God means to love everything that comes from Him. There is a simple Code of Conduct that is set forth as a guide for us to follow if we wish to walk with God. Jesus summed it up in the Gospel Reading today:
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
Everything that has been read before and afterward in Sacred Scripture; all that has been revealed is based on these two simple commandments. We are told to apply these to our thoughts, actions, and our entire faith-life. To not do so means that we have failed to do what God has asked us to do and therefore only sin will result. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot be considered good Christians in right relationship with God if we do not obey these two commandments which are the foundation of God’s creation. We were created to love and to be loved. To receive the full experience of God we must do both.
Being of human estate we will definitely fall short of God’s expectations and our own. It is inevitable. When this occurs we should recognize what we had done wrong and make the adjustments necessary. This is when we depend on God more and seek His guidance when correcting these failures. We will never be perfect and God is not asking us to be. He wants us to let Him do the work within us that is necessary so that we can begin the process of transformation into a better version of ourselves. In the meantime our relationship with Him will prevent us from continuing to make errors and mistakes. We may stray but we will never be lost forever if only we heed the voice of our God and respond to it. He can be our strength and our power that will enable us to overcome all obstacles, especially the ones that we erect ourselves.
God set forth commandments and laws for us to follow as guideposts to a better way of living and a better way of life. These enable us to enter into relationship with Him and also enable us to live our lives to the fullest potential the way that God wanted us to. The commandments, laws, and instructions set forth in Sacred Scripture are not there in the form of crime and punishment. They are presented out of love to insure that our lives can be lived to the fullest. When Jesus reiterated the two greatest commandments the emphasis was on love. Love should always be the central part of our faith-life and our life with God. Without experiencing and giving love whatever we do is for naught. It is love of God, his creation, and our fellow human beings that brings everything together and makes sense of it all. It is important to be open to being loved and to love with abandon. When this is done everything else falls into place.
Deacon Tom
My sisters and brothers in Christ,
All that God wants of us is to love Him and to love one another. Why can we not fulfill these commands? Why do we find ourselves so incapable of such a simple commandment? When we are honest with ourselves, we admit that there is something broken in our humanity. Our Catholic Tradition calls this “original sin” and because of our sinfulness, the Father sends His Son to save us in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The first reading today is from the Book of Exodus. This particular passage speaks to us of the mercy and compassion that God has for the orphans, the widows and the poor. God tells us that we must be like Him and also have mercy and compassion in a special way for the orphans, the widows and the poor. This is a requisite of those who belong to the “covenant.”
Today many of us Christians forget that we belong to the “new covenant” with Jesus Christ. We inherit the promises of the Old Covenant and have the gifts of the New Covenant. It is our baptism into Christ that makes us members of this Covenant. It is important for us Christians to remember that in this New Covenant we have the promise and commitment of God Himself for our salvation and for our well-being.
The second reading is from the First Letter to the Thessalonians. In this passage of this Letter, Saint Paul reminds us that we must always give example of how to live our Christian faith. When we live with joy and gladness the New Covenant, others are drawn to come to know the Lord. Most of us know at least one or two people that we would consider models for living a Christian life. We ourselves need to become models of how to live. We do that we striving to live as Christ lived, striving to be faithful to our Covenant with Him and by each day renouncing all that is against the Lord.
Today’s Gospel from Saint Matthew is very short but also very clear. What is the greatest commandment? To love God and to love one another. This message of the Lord Jesus is very clear: to live is to strive to love! If we want to be faithful to the God who created us, then we must love all others. We know that in the tradition, it is easy to love those who love us. Jesus calls us to love everyone and that proof of that love is the special love that we must have for our enemies and those who try to destroy us.
We are invited today to live more profoundly the love given to us in Christ Jesus. We are invited to show that love for all people and especially for those who are our enemies in any way. The promise for us, the Covenant, is that we shall possess everlasting life and be with the Lord forever.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
Jesus pulls a fast one in today’s Gospel. A lawyer comes up to him with a simple question: choose from all the commandments one that is the greatest. Jesus answers the lawyer but instead of choosing one commandment he chooses two. And if we look carefully at his response we can find in one of the commandments a third commandment. Instead of coming up with one commandment that is the greatest, Jesus offers three. First, we are to love God with all of our strength. Second, we are to love our neighbor. But we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So the third commandment is that we love ourselves. If you were to ask Jesus, then, what is the great commandment, he would offer this triple commandment of love: love of God, love of self, love of neighbor. He would suggest that this is God’s greatest revelation of how we should act. It is that upon which everything else hangs—both the law and all the prophets. So since this is so important and central a revelation, we should spend a little time reflecting upon it. We can do so by asking ourselves why does Jesus choose three commandments and what are their relationships to each other?
We can start with the command which is most obvious, the commandment to love our neighbor. Now neighbor here is not the person who lives next door. Neighbor is anyone we meet, anyone at all. Our neighbor is everyone in the world. The commandment is we are to love our neighbor. The necessity of this commandment is clear, and its impact cannot be underestimated. Imagine what a different world we could live in, if we could follow this one commandment, if people could relate to one another out of love instead of out of jealousy, greed, and resentment. To follow this commandment would truly change our world. Yet it is a difficult commandment to follow. Why is it that so often that we are unable to love our neighbor? We move now to the second commandment: love of self.
We are so often unable to love our neighbor because we do not have a genuine love of self. Only those who genuinely love themselves are able to love others. Those who consider themselves unworthy and unlovable have no love to give. Those who dominant attitude is one of failure or anger can only strike out to others in jealousy, hatred, or perhaps even violence. In order to genuinely follow the first commandment we must follow the second. We must love ourselves so that we are able to extend love to others. But then how do we establish an adequate love of self? Here the believer knows where to turn – to the third commandment: we are to love God with all our strength.
It is when we understand God’s love for us and can respond to God in love that we discover our worth and our value. God’s love is unconditional and transformative. When we embrace God’s love for us despite all of our mistakes and failings then we understand our true worth and value. Then we can love ourselves, and through that love others.
The great commandment according to Jesus is the triple commandment of love, to embrace God’s love for us, so that we can come to an adequate love of self, so that we can extend that love to others. This commandment of Jesus is not only striking poetry. It is a very practical truth that we can apply to our own lives. When we face other people who are difficult to love, people who irritate us, people who have hurt us, people whose attitude and stance is contrary to what we understand or can appreciate, we sometimes try to love them by finding good in them. But often it is our blindness to their goodness that is the problem in the first place. Therefore, a more successful way to love those that are difficult to love is by finding goodness in ourselves, by remembering that we are chosen sons and daughters of God. By remembering how we have been blessed, how often we have been forgiven for our failings, how frequently we have been lost and God has found us and saved us, how God’s love for us is unconditional, we can gain a sense of how we are worthy and lovable in God’s eyes. It is by claiming God’s love for us that we can find the freedom to spread love to others, even when they are difficult to love.
There is not enough love in our world. All of us can come up with excuses why other people do not deserve our love. It is then that we must remember that we do not deserve God’s love and yet God loves us nevertheless. When we can claim that unconditional love that God has for us, we will be free to love others. Then, and only then, will we know the mystery of living Jesus’ greatest commandment.
There is a peculiar twist in today’s gospel, and it is intentional. When one of the teachers of the law asks Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment?” he poses the most important question that a Jew could ask. For Jews of the first century, like Jesus and the teacher who questioned him, saw in the law the revelation of God’s will. To know the most important commandment of the law, then, was to know what was most important to God and also to discover what was the secret of living. Here is where the twist comes in. When Jesus is asked to give one commandment, he gives two instead: we are to love the Lord God with all of our hearts, and that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Giving two commandments instead of one is intentional. Jesus’ point is that these two commandments are actually one—like two sides of the same coin, like two hands working together, like the way that the sun is both light and heat.
So what is most important to God? What is the secret of living? It is to know that God is a God of love and that we are asked to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, and with all of our mind and to know that if our love of God is to be real, then it must be expressed in our love for others. This is the great double commandment of Jesus. To say that we love God is to commit ourselves to love others, and in our love of others, we express our love for God. This great commandment of Jesus is at the heart of Christianity. It has always been so.
I want to share with you a remarkable quotation that was written by a Greek philosopher living in Athens in 125 C.E.—that is about a hundred years after Jesus’ death. His name was Aristides. He was not a Christian. But he wrote a letter to the emperor Hadrian describing the Christians in the city of Athens. His remarkable letter has come down to us. Here is what Aristides says:
“Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who would hurt them. If one of them has something, he gives freely to the one who has nothing without boasting. If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy as though he were a real brother. And if they hear that one of them is in jail or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs and, if it is possible to redeem him, they set him free. And if there is among them any poor or naked, if they have no spare food, they fast for two or three days in order to supply the needy. Truly, this is a new people and there is something divine in them.”
Aristides was able to see something divine in the Christians living in Athens, because he saw how they loved others.
What about us? We’re here today because we believe in God. We come together today to show our love of God. This is good, but when we leave this church, is our love of God visible? Can others see something divine in us? If you want to know, ask your neighbors. Ask your neighbors how they see you. Would they say, “Mrs. Brown? Oh, she has a beautiful yard. She is a wonderful cook.” Or would they say, “She’s somebody who would welcome a stranger, who would never judge anyone by their condition or the color of their skin.” Ask the people you work with how they see you. Would they say, “Oh, Mr. Farmer? He’s smart. He’s a climber. He’s very efficient.” Or would they say, “He’s a person I can trust. He’s a person who gives others a fair shake. He cares for people more than money.” Ask your friends. Would they say, “Joey? Oh Joey’s a good athlete. He’s the life of the party. You always have fun with Joey.” Or would they say, “Joey is someone you can count on. He’ll give you his time if you’re in trouble. He’ll never tear down another person.”
In order to see the divine in us people must see our love of others.
Jesus’ great commandment is a double commandment. Each part is essential.
To say that we love God and not to love others is following only half the
commandment. And following half the commandment is not following the
commandment at all.
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