GOD IS LOVE! LOVE IS ALL!
Love is all that there is to life and Christian living. Hence, no matter our intelligence and knowledge of the Holy Scripture, doctrine and theological discourses on God, the Church and Christian life, faith and spirituality. If our lives do not reflect the basic empathy to relate, connect, feel or love, then all is nothing. Love is all there is in the Christian faith, life and spirituality.
OUR THEMES
The readings of this 30th Sunday in ordinary time invite and challenge to the greatest commandment or highest virtue that there is in the Christian life. That is, love of God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. As well as the love of neighbour: friend, visitor and stranger alike.
In other words, the central theme of today’s readings is the greatest Commandment in the Bible, namely, to respond to God’s Infinite Love for us by loving Him, and to express that love in action by loving Him in our neighbour.
FIRST READING: EXODUS 22:20-26
God through Moses reminds the Israelites of their hospitality, kindness and empathy to all especially strangers. Equally, he challenges them to be compassionate with the defenceless and more vulnerable in their midst: widows and orphans. Finally, he declared himself an advocate, defender and protector of the less privileged.
The psalmist in Psalm 17 sings to the praises, glories and victories of the Lord God who is his strength, rock, fortress, saviour, refuge; shield, mighty help, and stronghold.
SECOND READING: 1 THESSALONIANS 1:5-10
First Thessalonians is the earliest letter we have from Saint Paul. In the first century AD Thessalonians lived and served in a mostly pagan city with an enthusiasm so contagious as to attract others to the Church. Here Paul congratulates his community on the positive effects of their example of loving one another as Jesus has commanded them to do.
For St Paul, the imitation of Christ is the core of spirituality. This is an unmerited grace of God. Therefore, he encourages the Christian community of Thessalonica to live an exemplary Christian life. Of imitating him as he imitates Christ. A life of full conviction through the power of the Holy Spirit. Where they too are model of faith and action to other Christian communities of Macedonia and Acadia.
THE GOSPEL: MATTHEW 22:34-40
In the gospel of today, Jesus demonstrates to us a life of utterly unselfish love for God and our neighbours. And he invites us to make that our guide to Christian life.
These two things are at stake in the question of the doctor of the law to Jesus. 1. It could be a test as Matthew suggested. 2. Or, it could be that despite his scriptural knowledge of the law, he was spiritually bankrupt of the true meaning of the law-which love.
There are a lot of lessons and implications for us in this gospel especially today when we live in a world of bastardized love. Where the word love has no substantial meaning. It is also a challenge in a world where religion and religious practices are devoid of true compassionate love and full of rules and regulations.
1. It is the continuation of the attack launched by the Sadducees. Only this time by the party of Pharisees who knew Jesus had silenced the Sadducees and Herodians.
2. Like always Jesus uses their challenges to teach profound truth about God and his way. This time he uses this opportunity to give the definition of religion and the centre spiritual of the Christian life and spirituality.
3. Religion from Jesus’ perspective consists in loving God and our neighbours. That is love is all that is and would be Christianity.
GOD´S LOVE FIRST
i. “You must love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your whole soul, and your whole mind.” This is a quotation from the Book of Deuteronomy: 6:5.
ii. It is a verse of the Shema: the basic and most essential creed of Judaism.
iii. It is the sentence with which every Jewish service still opens, and the first text which every Jewish child commits to memory.
iv. It means that to God we must give total love.
(a) A love which dominates our emotions.
(b) A love which directs our thoughts.
(c) And a love which is the dynamic of our actions.
All religion especially the Christian religion starts and ends with love which is the total commitment of life to God. Love is all and not rules or regulations or intellectual discourses.
HUMAN´S LOVE SECOND
Equally, the second part of the commandment of love is “You must love your neighbour as yourself.” Here, Jesus quotes the Book of Leviticus: 19:18. The basic assumption is: that our love for God must issue in love for men. Love is all, this is why Apostle John tells us:
God is love. 1 John 4:8. Furthermore, he affirms if we don’t love the men and women we see we cannot love whom we don’t see.
a. It is the love of God first, and love of man second.
b. It is only when we love God that man becomes lovable.
c. Man is lovable because he is created in the image and likeness of God. (Genesis 1:26-27).
d. One fundamental truth of hate, brutality and inhumaneness is that the dignity of man is reduced to nothing by the perpetrator or hater who cruelly commits crimes against humanity.
e. Take away the love of God and man becomes not only a robot or machine but unteachable, pessimistic, un-improvable and bestial unto his or her fellow beings.
f. Fundamentally, man’s love is 100% firmly grounded in the love of God.
SUMMARY OF TODAY´S REFLECTION
For the first commandment, loving the Lord your God with all our heart and soul, is inseparable from the conjoined commandment, of loving my neighbour as myself. For Jesus, what God wants from us above all else is love.
There is no genuine love of God unless it finds expression in the love of our neighbour. Love of neighbour, in turn, presupposes a healthy self-love, recognising and appreciating myself as fundamentally good, because I am created in the image and likeness of God.
Love is not in the negative action of “don’t” but in the positive actions, words and thoughts of “dos”.
OUR PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, you teach us with your words and deeds that love is all: greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, (John 15:13). Yet, to love concretely as your love is the biggest challenge to the Christian life and testimony. Help us always to know that to be truly religious is to love God and to love the men whom God made in His image. A love that is a total commitment in devotion to God and practical service of men. Amen.
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