Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

First Reading: Ex 22:20–26

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 18:2–3, 3–4, 47, 51

Second Reading: 1 Thes 1:5c–10

Gospel: Mt 22:34–40

 St. Monica Catholic Church, San Antonio, TX

           A long time ago, in a garden far, far away, God gave our first parents one rule to follow: do not eat the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden. And so, Adam and Eve walked in the love of God and of one another. God said ‘don’t eat the thing,’ but they ate the thing. Fast forward to the time of the Exodus. God gave the Hebrews Ten Commandments to follow – three that told them how they were to love God and seven that told them how to love one another. In our first reading today. Moses reminded the Hebrew people they should remember not to treat others as they themselves were treated during their years of slavery in Egypt. They were to have a passion for God and compassion for human beings. God told them to do the ten things, but they failed to do the ten things. Over the following centuries, the priests and prophets of the Israelites crafted laws designed to help the people live out the Ten Commandments. But they lost sight of why they were to keep them, and the Jewish religion became legalistic. By the first century A.D., there were 613 precepts in the Jewish Law. 248 of them taught what people MUST do. 365 of them taught what people were MUST NOT do. The law was so complicated that nobody could do the 613 things or even remember all of them. The teachers of the time recognized this fact and so some attempted to summarize the law to make it easy. Rabbi Hillel the Elder taught “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah while the rest is commentary; go and learn from it.”[1] He was on to something, I think.

In the Gospel today, the Pharisees sent a lawyer to question Jesus on his understanding of Jewish Law. They sought to regain sight of the spirit of the law, lost in the mess they had made of it. They asked him what was the most important of the commandments – what lies at the very heart of religion? Referencing Sacred Scripture, where God reveals Himself to Man, Jesus first quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 and stated the greatest commandment is to love God with the entirety of one’s being. Jesus then quoted from Leviticus 19:18 and stated that the second greatest commandment is just like the first – to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Jesus summarized the entirety of the Jewish Law and even the Ten Commandments by stating all of the Law and the Prophets, that is, all of Scripture depends on these two commandments. It is like a rod suspended from two strings. Cut either of them and the rod falls. Jesus reminded the Pharisees (and us) that we are to have a passion for God and compassion for human beings.^[2]

          “There is nothing more important than our relationship with God and in extension, our relationship with one another.”^[3] They go together – love of neighbor is like love of God. One is simply not possible without the other. is far too easy to fall into the trap of dedicating all our time and energy to religious practices, but forget reaching out in charity to our brethren in need. It is also far too easy to fall into the trap of immersing ourselves into various social causes and humanitarian efforts, but not developing a personal, living relationship with our Lord. In our second reading, St Paul rejoiced that the lived example of the Thessalonians’ faith in love was so strong and recognizable that they were examples to others around them in their pagan culture. So too should our passion for God and compassion for human beings set the example for our largely pagan culture today. To separate love of God from love of neighbor is to distort our faith and obscure our living example.

          Sometimes in our own lives of discipleship, full of responsibilities and duties, we lose sight of the motivation behind what we do. When we seek to do God’s will, we are to be motivated by love. But, just like our first parents, we are weak and we fail. We are sometimes motivated by other things – fear of punishment, a desire to be rewarded for ‘doing good’, the prideful need to be better than someone else, a craving for praise, admiration, or respect, or even cultural conformity – following a law just because it is a law. But the entire reason God revealed himself to us through Scripture is so that we can love him and our neighbor more fully. Indeed, Vatican II teaches us that Jesus revealed in the Scriptures that “the fundamental law of human perfection, and consequently of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love”^[4] Everything we do as disciples of Christ Jesus must be motivated by our love of God and our love of neighbor. We are to have a passion for God and compassion for human beings.

          Finally, I wish to point out that in Sacred Scripture, love is never, ever presented as an emotional feeling or a mere affection. Love is always presented as a motivation for action, a commitment to the other. Christ loved those who washed his feet with their tears and also those who drove the nails through his hands and feet. Christ loved the religious leaders that rejected him and also those sinners who followed him. Motivated by love, he met people in their place of weakness, called them to repentance, and lifted them higher. In love he forgave their sins, and in love he offered himself to the Father on the Cross. Jesus Christ was a man of action - the love at the root of our faith calls us to imitate Our Lord in action. As we prepare ourselves to receive the Sacrament of Love in the Holy Eucharist, let us remember what lies at the root of our faith. Let us remember our motivation for discipleship. Let us ponder what St. Thomas Aquinas said about the two greatest commandments: “God is to be loved above all things, because love for one’s neighbor is a consequence of love for God, and, when man is loved, God is loved, because man is the image of God”^[5] To be fully alive as Children of the Most High, we must have a passion for God and compassion for human beings.

St. Joseph, Protector of Holy Church, Pray for us!

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[1] Hillel the Elder, Shabbath, Trans. By H. Freedman (London, Soncino Press), 31.

^[2] José Antonio Pagola, Following in the Footsteps of Jesus: Meditations on the Gospels for Year A, ed. Rafael Luciani, trans. Valentine de Souza, Series Ministeria (Miami, FL: Convivium Press, 2010), 140.

 ^[3] James M. Reinert, Preaching the Social Doctrine of the Church in the Mass, vol. 1 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011), 170.

^[4] Gaudium et Spes. 38; Lumen Gentium 42, CCC 826

^[5] The Navarre Bible: New Testament (Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2008), 125.