THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A
(Ex 22:20-26; 1 Thes 1:5c-10; Math 22:34-40)

Theme: we are the bearers of love for God and for our neighbor

Reflection:

- The Gospel of the last Sunday helped us to understand that we are called not only for giving glory to God with the liturgy and prayers but also for building his kingdom of peace, justice and love through our active participation in the social and community responsibility; that’s what Jesus means when he asks us to give to God what belongs to God, that is his glory, and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, that is social task. We need to strike the balance between the prayer and practice, between the reading the Good News of the Scripture and giving the good life to others, between desiring for the kingdom of God to come on earth and making it realize in our midst by our actions, and finally between raising our hands to God in vertical dimension and extending our hands to our neighbors in the horizontal dimension and thus making a cross in life and living a life of cross; that’s exactly what Christ has done on the cross: offering himself to God in the symbolism of the vertical piece and pouring out of his body and blood for the salvation of the humanity in the symbolism of the horizontal piece on which he has opened his arms to embrace all.
- In today’s Gospel, as the continuation of the last week’s, we have the commandment of love: one commandment with two directions: Love for God in the vertical direction and for the neighbor in horizontal direction; and both these have a ‘meeting point’ in Christ’s love manifested in his fulfillment of His Father’s will and the salvation of all men and perfectly accomplished on the cross. Therefore, our love either for God or for the neighbor or for both together has the starting point in Jesus Christ, Love of God for humanity; this once again shows that we are called to bear the love of God by our spiritual renewal and the love of our neighbor (society or the community) by our presence and cooperation.

First Reading:

- Precept of same measurement (treatment): give the love if you want to receive love:
o Today’s first reading is taken from the series of social-ethical teachings, extracted from the ‘code of the alliance’ on the Mount Sinai (Ex 20:22-23”19);
o Three classes of the citizens who are under the domination of the privileged of the Holy Land: the stranger, the orphan and the widow; these three categories of people do not have the ‘defender’ and they are easily maltreated and used by the citizens because of their helplessness (stranger), poverty (orphan) and the loneliness (widow);
o The measure we measure is the measure we are measured with: it is the precept that is followed here and it is the social ethics that has to be dominant in treating others; God’s judgment will be according to their acts; He tells them to treat aliens well remembering their past status in which they were once upon a time aliens in the foreign land; He tells them to treat well the widows and the orphans because of the just judgment he would make against them also in which they also have the possibility of becoming widows and orphans; therefore, if we measure well, we will be also measured well; if we maltreat them, we will also be maltreated; if we condemn them, we will also be condemned; and positively, if we love them, we will also be loved;
- God himself takes the side of poor: for his love is equal for all
o God himself takes the place of defender for them; he has decided to bring them under his paternal guidance and for this reason the community has to surround them and embrace them with care and love;
o The heroes of the passage, the stranger, the widow and the orphan, have God himself as their Rock, Fortress and Liberator who becomes pitiless judge against those who attend to his protected ones with oppression (v.20), with maltreatments (v.21), with usury (v.24) and with the indifferences (25-26);
o In this way, God demonstrates to them the social task that each of the citizen should bear in mind and manifest in his action and in particular way ‘to God’s preferred ones’, that is, the least of the society or the maltreated of the community;

Second Reading:

- Leaving everything aside to embrace and to accept God:
o As we heard in the last week’s reflection, we have only one God and it is he who does everything in our life and we believe and accept this with our Christian faith;
o Once we give space to God in our life we have to renounce all other priorities and all other preoccupations with regard to our faith and action; we have to prostrate before the True and Living God offering our whole self to him in rendering him the glory in the worthy manner;
o The community of Thessalonica has done just this: it has given up all the gods whom they were worshipping as soon as they have come into contact with the message of Jesus Christ who has shown them the True and Ever-living and loving God: “you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God” (v.9);
- Imitating the messenger of Christ:
o The community of Thessalonica has imitated Paul with the enthusiasm of the faith (v.8) in the waiting for the coming of Christ (v.10);
o Acceptance of the messenger is the acceptance of the one who sent him: Jesus himself says that one who accepts him accepts the one who has sent him, his Father; believing in the messenger means believing also the one who has sent him; so also the imitation; in this way, Paul says that the community of Thessalonica has imitated him well in ‘infusing the word of God’ and in ‘giving authentic testimony’ to other and this way it has become also the imitator of Christ, its Lord: “be my imitators as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1);
- Being Model in the love of God and in the love of community:
o In accepting the word of God with the joy of the Spirit even in the midst of tribulations and sufferings, the Thessalonica has become model for the neighboring communities of Macedonia and Achaia (v. 6); in this embracing they have shown their love for God throwing away all their previous beliefs and their past practices of worshipping false gods;
o In testifying the faith with their words and with the witness of life, the community of Thessalonica has become also model for the love of neighbor because they have extended/offered them what they have received, the faith and love of God;
o We too are called to be ‘model community’ which pours out both love of God and of neighbor with our faith and charity;

Gospel:

- The greatest commandment: Love
o This is the central part in the conflict between Jesus and his adversaries. The question that is posed permits Jesus to proclaim the heart of the message clearly and perfectly: the Love
o V. 35: to put him to the test: once again a discourse raised by the Jewish authority to test Jesus and his message; they just came to know that Jesus has silenced the Herodians, the followers of Pharisees and they came this time with more intensity to trap him by asking him question in the law itself about which Jesus is thorough. We see a doctor of the Law coming to ask Jesus with the intention of catching Jesus in blasphemy and it is not the first time and there are diverse occasions (19:3; 22:15,18) in which they tried to find fault with Jesus; and Jesus gives a teaching that is very clear on the love of God and of neighbor; here we can see the continuity between the Old and New Testament, but it is Jesus himself who is at the centre of the commandment of love.
o V. 36-38: the doctor of the Law poses a question to Jesus on the ‘greatest commandment’, the expression which is proper only to Mathew. Jesus answers enumerating two commandments giving them almost an equal importance.
o V. 39: Jesus does not keep the two commandments on the same level and that is reason why he says, “the second is like the first” (not the first); but still it shares the same love that is expressed to God also to be expressed to the neighbor; Love your neighbor as yourself: it is not easily possible loving the other if one doesn’t love himself; here is a spontaneous movement of being (7:12 – the golden rule). The love of God is not kept under any limit. Here it loving God means to give everything to him with all the heart in the absolute manner; there is no border or limit for loving; instead, loving the neighbor means, giving to the other as we desire to be given; St. John gives a higher meaning to this neighbor’s love; it is no more referred to ourselves but to Christ: “love your neighbor as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34; 15:12).
o V. 40: Jesus provides an answer not only to the question posed but he takes it to the core message of whole scriptures and that’s reason why he adds at the end: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (v.40). In this way Jesus broadens the answer and refers it to the whole message of God for his humanity and his own message of love which should be fulfilled in loving God and the neighbor; “the completion of the Law is love” (Rom 13:10) again encourages to respect and fulfill the law because through this law we reach to love;
- Christian should go above the laws: life is above the law and is in love
o The ancient Jews are known for making a great number of laws and imposing them on the people and we find about 613 precepts among which 365 are negative ones that start with ‘do not do’ and they are compared to the days of the year, one per each day; and other 248 are the positive ones that start with ‘do’ and they are compared to our nerves of the body;
o In reality, in fact, there are only ten commandments that God has given them and he asked them to be faithful at least to these ten; but even those they were not able to follow; where it is said ‘not to kill’, they go on killing; where it is said ‘do not steal’, they go on stealing; and so on;
o Jesus, the giver of the New Law of Love, says that we have to go beyond following laws and we have to enter into the Spirit of love, otherwise we are just law-keepers, not the followers of the Spirit; we have the many examples of this:
 Mt 5:20 – our righteousness should exceed that of scribes and of Pharisees;
 Mt 5:20-22 – not to the point of murder and it is not permitted to be angry with our brothers;
 Mt 5:25f – adultery is a sin but we should not give a chance even to have bad look at a woman;
 Mt 5:31f and 38ff: even in making promises we should act as a genuine Christians;
 The beatitudes that Jesus proposes (Mt 5:1-12) are to be written on heart of every Christian;
 As Jesus, who has more than not doing evil to anyone, has done everything for the well-being of each one, even at the cost of his life, and so we too follow Christ in the way of living our law of love;
o Is it impossible? Some say (like Luther) that it is impossible and hard for the man to follow this new teaching of Christ; yes, indeed, Jesus did not say that it is possible; he said that ‘his yoke is easy and his burden light’ (Mt 11:29f). It is all the same a yoke and a burden; but it is neither impossible for those who desire higher values and who desire to live a holy life because there is the force of the Gospel and the grace of the Holy Spirit which help them; it is impossible only for those who are after the example of the rich young man (Math 19:16-30).
o The key is the way of Jesus: Jesus has shown us the mode and the way of being perfect as the heavenly Father is; “if you love me, keep my commandments” is the teaching of Jesus; love follows the living and observing his laws; even to the extent of loving the enemies as he himself did from the cross;
- Man lives for love and love perfects man to be fully human and fully divine:
o John Paul II, in his encyclical Redemptoris Hominis, Redeemer of Man, n.10, proclaim with great vigor that “man cannot live without love; he remains to himself a being incomprehensible, his life is without any sense, if the love is not revealed to him, if he does not experience and make it his own and if he does not participate in it profoundly.”
o For this reason Jesus proclaims the message of love and reveals the nature of man to the man himself; this means that without love man cannot realize himself fully; Jesus reveals the power of love by giving himself completely to make man fully alive and fully purposeful; he has given the testimony to that love by offering his life (by breaking his body and shedding his blood) on the cross;
o Therefore, love is not a mere sentiment and not a mere emotion but it is an Act; an act in and through which man turns openly and completely to the other giving his whole being, his mind, his heart and finally, if necessary, his life itself; this is an act Jesus has accomplished on the cross for the love of man and demands us to do the same for the love of our neighbor;
o Only in love man can find his dignity that is lost by the sin; only in love man explores the richness and profundity of his nature; only in love he discovers the mysterious dimensions of his reality guided and imbibed from the divine providence.
o Therefore, to learn love we need to love God; and “to love God is to be unvested ourselves of everything that is not of God” says St. John of the Cross. And to love our neighbor means to recognize in the other the image and likeness of God and thus extend our full heart and life towards him;
o To sum up in the words of St. Gregory the Great: “From the love of the neighbor originates the love of God; it is the love of the neighbor which nourishes the love of God. Because who neglect the love of God is not capable of loving his neighbor. We can progress most in the love of God, if first of all, in the womb of his love, we come fed with the milk of the love of the neighbor; as the love of God generates the love of neighbor, the Lord, before saying: ‘love your neighbor’ says: ‘love your God’. In this way, in the land of our heart the first root of love towards him is planted and is developed into the love of the neighbor.”

Conclusion:

- From the pain of love we gain joy and happiness:
o Love is an act; we do not say any more the words of love, like, ‘I love you’ and so on; we keep loving; love do not need words but is expressed and experienced only in the ‘deeds’; Jesus’ love flowed from his great Act on the Cross rather than just from his messages and miracles; it is an act of giving oneself to other; an act by which the giver stands open and transparent before his neighbor; an act goes towards the other with totality of mind and heart, that is, full of thought and full of care for the other; an act that transcends the mere feelings and emotions; an act that transforms the attitude of receiving into an attitude of giving;
o Love is an act; an action needs the energy and spending of the proper capacities for the other; an act that meets lot many of pains and sorrows, insults and misunderstandings, and even then, it does not stop going forward, it goes and goes, amidst all these hindrances, until it reaches its hand to the other; an act which finally gives full of joy and happiness in life;
- Building the love bridge between us and others:
o God, out of his immense love, has already built a bridge on the valley of our fall into sin; he has built it with the wood of the cross and with the act of love of his Son; we need to just make us of this cross of pain in and with love to reach out the heart of God and to be immersed into his love;
o We are called today to build the bridge of love between us and our neighbor cancelling the deep valley of hatred and indifference; we have the help of God’s love that makes us capable of building the bridges through which we can easily reach out to the other and give the possibility also for the other to reach out to us: thus it become an act of reciprocal love and concern; thus we bear both the love of God and the love of neighbor in our heart because the heart is the centre and basement for the experience of love; let us open our heart so that both the love of God and love of neighbor have the possibility of meeting each other and we become a man of love and our Christian task will become an act of love.