THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
29 OCTOBER 2017
The
commandments given by the Lord in the first reading from the Book of Genesis
reflect the experience of God’s chosen people.
They had been aliens in the land of Egypt. Like widows and orphans, they had no one to
protect them, and the Egyptians enslaved them and took advantage of their
helplessness. As they traveled through
the desert in their forty day trek to the Promised Land, they were completely
stripped of everything. Unlike
extortionists who took advantage of desperately poor people, God had embraced
them and clothed them with his Covenant at Mount Sinai as his own chosen
people.
Because God
had compassion on their ancestors in their distress, the Lord tells his people
that they must do the same. They must
treat the aliens in their midst with compassion and care. They must be attentive to the most vulnerable
people of their society – widows and orphans who had not social nets to protect
them. They must not take advantage of
desperately poor people who need their help.
If they take their cloaks as a pledge of repayment, they must take care
to return those cloaks at night, so that the poor will not freeze at night
without protection.
When the
Pharisees test Jesus in today’s Gospel, they know that they had developed 613
commandments of the Law. If he really is
an authentic teacher, which commandment would be the greatest? In response, Jesus quotes Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord,
your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” He quoted the “Shema,” which our Jewish
brothers and sisters recited every day.
But then he immediately quotes Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Like the commandments in the first reading,
neither of these commandments is new.
However, Jesus joins them so radically that they can never be
separated.
That is the
real challenge for us, as disciples of Jesus Christ. Like the Israelites in their exodus in the
desert from Egypt to the Promised Land, we sometimes experience the love of God
when we are at the lowest point in our lives.
We have just lost a loved one, or we have been diagnosed with a life
threatening disease, or we have made some catastrophic choices. In those moments, God searches us out, not as
a warm feeling, but as presence that accompanies us in the darkness. It is in those moments that we realize that
we are created in the image of God.
Thomas Merton once wrote: “To say
that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my
existence, for God is love. Love is my
true identity. Selflessness is my true
self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.”
That is why
Jesus links love of God so intimately with love of neighbor. Once I am convinced that God loves me, I can
reach out to love my neighbor. Loving a
neighbor does not necessary mean that I have warm feelings about my
neighbor. Love means that I want the
best for that person, no matter how I feel about that person.
During this
month of October, we have been focusing the ways in which these commandments
affect the most vulnerable of our society.
The most vulnerable include babies within their mothers’ wombs, the poor
who depend on our generosity, the disabled and the elderly, and the aliens in
our midst. During this month, we have
explored specific ways in which we can love those most vulnerable in our
society. We have also been praying for refugees
and immigrants. In our politically
divided culture, there is much controversy on this issue. It is complicated with no easy solution. But, it is also important that we consider
the Word of God, commanding us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
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