THIRTY FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - B

THIRTY FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – B: (Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Heb 7:23-28; Mark 12:28b-34) Theme: When we love, we are not far away from the kingdom of God Reflection: Love is the Only Virtue that empowers life - We are called to enter into the dimension of love: Today, the Church is admonishing us to enter into the dimension of love. Love appears as a small and a sweet word. But it’s depth, its height, its width and its fullness reach beyond the human measure. Some time back we have already noted on this aspect of love. We said that when ever we talk of love, the only possible starting point is from above: the divine love. God is love and His love permeates the whole universe. Every single creature has its origin from this love and has its destiny to this love. Every being, alive and active, manifests God’s love to the world. God cannot exists outside love. Man has no life without love. Love is a knot between God and the human being. All other elements anywhere in the world are in connection with the love and from this love they recharge their power. In a single word, we can say that love is the only virtue which empowers life: both divine and human life. - God himself is the Essence of Love: Our God, according to our Christian faith, is the God of the Trinity. He is a God in Three Persons: Three Persons very intimately interlinked with the bond of love. The intimate relationship of love between them is so deep that any One of them cannot exist and does not will to exist without the other two. This is the true and authentic bond of love. How it could be possible that there are Three Persons but at the same time exist as One God is the question of the Christian Mystery. Above all the researches being made for the solution for the question there is one thing that is crystal clear. It is this: in love there is the unity of not only body and spirit but entire nature of the persons. It is with the essence of love that our God exists as the Trinity. Therefore, it is God who is the foundation and the fountain of love. We have the rays of love only from his divine nature. His divine nature is given to man in the time of creation: God created man in his image and likeness (Gen 2:18). It is in this act of creation that God, by sharing his divine nature, injected into man also the essence of love. Man is called into existence and destined to live only with this divine love. Infact, he is given this possibility when he is created very different from other creatures: his uniqueness is the love which he is endowed with. God goes out of himself and reaches to the other in the form of love. Therefore, love is not something which is fixed essence for itself. It is to reach out. It is to go out. It is to touch the partner. God touched man as his partner of love. - Love is a movement Outwards: Love is never and cannot be for its own sake. If it is so it is not true love. Love is a movement which goes out and touches the other. It’s very nature is to be contageous. God cannot hide his love but to share it within the bond of trinitarian relationship. His love is so immense that it moves outwards of himself: it reaches to man. God loved so much that world that he has sent His Only Son to save it from the pit of non-love. Man is created for love and in view of love. He has soon forgotten his nature of loving and being loved. He has chosen the way of pride and selfishness. He started closing himself from God and this is first sin. Sin, which is priorily a rejection of love of God, made him a stranger to God and kept him away from God. Love is something that goes out and reaches the other. But with the arrogance and avarice of man the movement took an “U” turn. The aspect of love is turned into an occasion of self-glory. Man has built the wall between himself and God and between himself and the neighbor. Even in this pathetic condition of man and even when man has been rejecting his love, God did not keep himself away from loving man. Love cannot draw itself aback when something raises against it. Instead, love faces every hurdle with patience and forgiveness. Then only it is love. God always loves. Man often responds to it with the tendency of personal freedom and prestige. God comes out of himself and reaches the other. Man instead closes within himself without being disturbed by the other. With the movement of God towards man and with the movement of man towards himself, there is a cross movement. God draws the line of love and man wipes it with the line of pride. This is the cross: one wills and the other rejects. - Cross – The Sign of Love: The cross movement that took place between the love of God and the wilful negligence of man is set right and modified. The cross movement is restored by Jesus. He balances both poles/beams by assuming into himself both the love for God and love for man. It is infact with the view of the cross that He, being God, has take the human form. Finally, on the cross and in the death, He brings down once again God’s love to man and man’s love to the fellow men. Thus, Jesus Christ becomes the personification of love and His Cross becomes the Sign of love. Suffering and sacrifice, then, become no more a condition of helplessness but a means of love. The man who has closed into himself has given the possibility of making again “Big U” turn which leads him towards God and towards his neighbor. Therefore, human life is re-empowered by the virtue of love. And man does not remain a mere creature but becomes a being of love. Readings: Indissoluble Unity between God’s love and Human love - Love of God is essential (first reading): The reading taken from the Book of Deuteronomy presents to us the Act of Faith of the people of Israel. God gives them the Ten Commandments through Moses. Moses once again proclaims to the people the essential element of their life: to love God. His words are very clear: “Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Only Lord. You will love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength” (Dt 6:4-5). This is the primary and the only thing that every Israel has to do: loving the Lord, his God. - The question of the Scribe (the Gospel): The gospel presents to us one of scribes who comes to ask Jesus, “what is the first of all the commandments?”. This question becomes the starting point for the synthesis of while human existence. There can be many other complimentary quetions with this: what is the most important thing in life? What is the fundamental orientation of our words and actions? What is that which occupies our life most? Who is God and how much we allow him to act in our situations? How much space we leave for God in our hearts? What is driving force in our relationship with others? All these question arise from One Basic Question: what is priority of our life? With the posing of this question, the Scribe opens wide the whole question of our human life and love. His question is so effective that if one knows answer for this question, he can easily find answer for any other question. This is the first question that has to be asked and the last question that can be asked by anyone, anywhere and anytime. The whole human life depends on answering this question. If proper answer is found, human life finds its proper meaning and significance. Or else, it fails in its being human and becomes either inhuman or violent as animal life. The question is posed to the right person and Jesus answers to it in the only way possible: the way of love. Such a deep question and the answer that Jesus provides demand our attention today. - Love of God and Love of Neighbor (the Gospel): Jesus does not hesitate to give an answer to the Scribe. The question is about what is the first of all. Jesus replies immediately with what is first and what is second. He says that the first is to love God and the second is to love one’s neighbor. The attitude of Jesus is important and has to be comprehended well. He did not wait for the Scribe to ask what is the second of all the commandments. He did not even a gap and a brief lecture before proclaiming which is the second. He replies instantly with the love of God and love of neighbor. He never wanted to see the both commandments to be separated. Infact, for him there never exists any division between them. God’s love flows into human love and human love is perfected and fulfilled only in God’s love. He calls for the intimate relationship between the first and the second: between loving God and loving the fellow beings. - Indissolible Unity between the love God and love of neighbor: Jesus brings about this unity in two phrases. o First, he indicates the link between the Old and New Testaments. He answers not with something outside but with something that already exists in the Law that God, His Father, has given to the people of Israel. Jesus quotes the first commandment as it is (v. 29). He does not change even a single letter. It signifies that he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them (Math 5:17ff). He does not see the seperation between the Old Law and New Law. For him both are equally important because what is Old find its fulfillment in the New and what is New is already prefigured and preannounced in the Old. o Second, he links the love of God with the love of neighbor. He himself becomes the knot between the two movements of love. He is the Central Figure and the Synthesis in whom both the love of God and the love of man find their existence fully and perfectly. Infact, He is the Ultimate Testimony of this love. His love for God is so immence that He obeys him even to the death. His love for man is so great that He offers His Body and Blood on the cross. He was never for himself even for a single moment. He is always for the Father in the Spirit and for the world in the act of sanctification. His movement is always outwards. His life is always outreaching. Therefore, He manifests by his person and proclaims by his word that there is unseparable unity between the love of God and the love of neighbor. Conclusion: We are inside the kingdom of God if only we love - To Be in relation with God in prayer: We are invited first of all to be the testimonies of the contemplation. We need to recognize God’s presence within us. We need to profess our faith in Him with unconditional and uncompromised attitude. This is what the Scribe in the Gospel has done and the People of Israel are asked to testify. It is only by being with Jesus we can know where we are and what we are doing. It is only by an interaction with him that we enter into the deeper meaning of life. Prayer leads us to the faith and faith leads us to the knowledge and knowledge leads us to the love. Our christian joureny initiates with the prayer and ends with the love. - To Be in relation with the other in act: Our rapport with God in prayer and in faith guide us to the point of offering our entire existence for the well being of the other and for the meaninful development of the world. In prayer we raise our hands to God in praise and thanksgiving. In action we extend our hands to the needy. Love for God is expressed in our Charitable presence to the other. God’s love flows into us and through us to the others. We need to be mindful of this truth always. Like the scribe in the gosple we need to believe and affim the teaching of Jesus: You have said well, Master, and according to the truth – to love God and to love the neighbor surpass all other norms of life (v. 32ff). In prayer we go towards God and in act we go towards the other and thus it becomes a movement outwards: a gesture of love. - If we love we are not far away from the kingdom of God: We know what is love and we know how to love. Enough to see and meditate the Cross and the Eucharist and we understand the nature of love. We do not need any more philosophy, sociology, science, technology and even theology. We need only one thing to do: to open the closed doors of our life. Love is not just a feeling but a concrete act. We need to place our existence wide open before God and before the others and our love is manifested in the right manner. This is the love that Jesus is expecting us to live out. This is the love that Jesus is inviting us to pour out. If we have such love, which reaches outwards to God and to our fellow beings, then we are not away from reign of God. We need to hear those words from Jesus: you are not distant from the kingdom of God. We need to proclaim to the other the same words: you are not distant from my life. Are we ready to manifest such a profound love and thus become part of the Christ’s Banquet of love? Let us try to answer it before we receive him into our hearts.