THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
29 OCTOBER 2023
Today,
Jesus is in the temple teaching. He had
entered triumphantly into Jerusalem. The
crowds people welcome him. But the religious
leaders are opposed to him. He had
silenced the Sadducees. Now, their
conservative opponents, the Pharisees try to trip him up. A scholar of the law, asks what appears to be
an innocent question. It is not. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the
greatest?” The Pharisees had developed
613 laws from the Law of Moses. 284 are
“thou shalt” commandments. 365 are “thou
shalt not” commandments. The scribe has a
formal education in all of these commandments and knows them well. He is testing Jesus, a rabbi from Nazareth with
no formal education. He wants to expose
Jesus as a self-taught teacher ignorant of the Law of Moses.
Jesus walks
right through his trap. He quotes
Deuteronomy 6:5. “You shall love the
Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
mind.” It is a command prayed by
faithful Jews every day – the Shema Israel.
Without hesitating, he quotes Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.” Then he says, “The whole law
and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
The
brilliance of his answer lies in his radical connection of these two
commandments. The law is very specific
about what it means to love God. Loving
God involves the heart, the center of a person’s being. Loving God involves the soul, the life form itself. Loving God includes the mind, which gives
understanding and strength to make the right decisions. Those same qualities apply to loving
neighbor. Love is not just a warm
feeling or a strong emotional attachment.
Love involves our entire person centering our lives on God and on our
neighbors created in God’s image. Authentic
love is the decision to want the best for another for the sake of the other,
whether we like the person or agree with the person.
Our first
reading gives two of the 365 “shall nots” from the Law of Moses. Both have to do with those on the margins of
society. The first applies to aliens,
widows, and orphans. They have no family
ties to support them. God has a special
care for them, especially since their ancestors had been aliens in Egypt
themselves. The second applies to the
poor. Poor neighbors must rely on the
generosity of those with more resources to survive. When those with more resources lend money,
they look for collateral to make sure that they will be repaid. For the
poor, the only collateral they have is their clothing. The commandment insists that clothing cannot
be kept as collateral overnight, because that is the poor person’s only blanket.
As we apply
these two closely connected commandments to our daily lives, we too must be
conscious of our responsibility to love those who are at the margins of society
today. Many of our ancestors had come to
this country as immigrants. The plight
of refugees has become a divisive political issue. But our parish is sponsoring refugee families
who have been properly vetted through Catholic Charities. On this first weekend of the month, we can
support our Saint Vincent de Paul Society in providing food and necessary funds
for those who come to us in need. We
support Father Larry and his parish in Uganda, knowing that they will never be
able to repay us. The same support goes
to our sister parish of Saint Adalbert and our Palestinian Christian friends in
the Holy Land. When we respond to their
needs, either individually or through our parish, we are keeping the greatest
commandment, the command to love God and neighbor.
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