October 25, 2020

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“The Inseparable Commandments”

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

 

In last week’s Gospel the enemies of our Lord were unable to ensnare the Lord with their question about taxes. In today’s passage they try again having a scholar question him on the law. Which of 613 precepts of the Mosaic Law is the greatest? Jesus quotes from the Book of Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God” but then, adds a second, from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The novelty of Jesus consisted in uniting these two commandants.

Our challenge lies in keeping them united; to see them as inseparable. We easily separate them. We can understand that God is worthy of love and we strive to love him by being here today, by praying, receiving the Sacraments, listening to God’s word, staying united to the Church and fulfilling the duties of our vocation.

But Jesus reminds us, this is only one side of the coin. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor. St. John reminds us, “If anyone says, I love God but hates his brother, he is a liar.”

Some people are of course are easy to love. They are good to us in many ways and we are happy to be in their company. But Our Lord said, “If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? The Lord’s commandment to love is a wide embrace. What about those we find unlovable: those who have wronged us, hurt, or betrayed us; those we find unattractive?

• Do I avoid or ignore them?
• Do I pray for bad things to happen to them?
• Do I gossip about them?
• Do I rejoice at their failures and mourn their successes?

What is the attitude of our heart? We should love them because God loves them. I certainly can understand why God loves me and why I can expect to be loved by God, but how can God love those others?

But the reality is that despite what I might think of them, even with all their faults, God loves them just as he loves me—with all my faults! What matters is not that person’s worth to me but that person’s worth to God. Our Lord does not grant us the prerogative to distinguish, I will love here and not there.

Still, in our weakness, we struggle in fulfilling this command because we so often hold on to past injuries and prejudices. We struggle too because our neighbor may be at the same time our enemy—and we are to love and pray for our enemies. Our love for our neighbor is the measure of our love for God. We cannot do it without the grace of God. The saints can and should be our guides. Let’s hear what they say about this commandment:

St. Thomas Aquinas: “When you love someone because he is a source of advantage or of pleasure, you are really loving not the friend, but yourself…to love your neighbor in that manner is to love him as you love wine or a horse. The commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves requires that our love be genuine.”

St. Robert Bellarmine: Nothing serves so well to establish and maintain [peace and union] as the fore-bearing charity whereby we put up with one another’s defects. There is no one who has not his faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, a superior or a subject, an old man or a young, a scholar or a dunce. It is easy enough to be drawn to good, healthy people who have pleasant manners, but that is only natural love and not charity.

And finally, St. Augustine: gives us some potent food for meditation: “There is no sin or crime committed by another which I myself am not capable of committing through my weakness; and if I have not committed it, it is because God, in his mercy, has not allowed me to and has preserved me in good.”

May Jesus in the Eucharist, the Sacrament of love and the source of love, help us to look upon our neighbor with his eyes so that our love of neighbor will be the measure of our love for him.
 

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30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Commandments

Deacon Kevin O’Boyle

From the time we are young children, as human beings we tend to dislike commandments. When we first tell our young children, they can or can’t do something, to when the dreaded “NO” word is first used to them (and later echoed back from them) normal reactions seem to reveal hatred for being told what to do. And yet, as good parents, we know there are some things that we must train our children to do or avoid doing for their own good—and honestly sometimes for our own sanity.

God is our Heavenly Father, and as a Good Parent, He too must sometimes tell us what to do or what not to do. He has done this throughout the ages. We have all been taught His Ten Commandments. That, for the Israelites was just the beginning. By the time Jesus had His public ministry there were over 600 rules!

All our readings today, either directly or by reference deal with Commandments – or how the People of God were to live. Our first reading today is from Exodus. It is set shorty after Moses received the Ten Commandments and is really just a list of additional rules. In general, these rules are set up to require the people to protect aliens, widows, orphans, and the poor.

Our second reading today from 1st Thessalonians is a bit vaguer in its application to commands. Put in context, however, Paul is congratulating the Thessalonians for their commitment to commands given to them by Paul and his followers in the way they lived. The Thessalonians took the lessons to heart and are thus fulfilling both verbal and non-verbal instructions they received.

We then come to our Gospel Reading. Here, the Pharisees are at it again, trying to trip up our Lord by asking which Command was the greatest. Remember, there are over 600 of them now. But Jesus answers the test by giving His Great Commandment – To Love God and to Love your neighbor as yourself.

What do these commands - or Commandments – mean to us today. First, we are still called to obey the 10 Commandments. They are not, as some would suggest, 10 Suggestions – they are Commandments. Therefore, we are called, for example to keep the Lord’s day Holy. The Church interprets this as going to mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. While this duty is temporarily suspended by our nation’s Bishops in view of Covid, it will be reinstated.

We are admonished that we may not kill. This commandment relates directly to the sanctity of all life, from conception until natural death, and outlaws, in addition to what we might call direct killing, things like abortion, euthanasia, physician assisted suicide, aspects of in vitro fertilization, and similar assaults on life. This also means we must respect the sanctity of life in all persons—including captives like the families of those attempting illegal entry into our country.

We are told we cannot covet our neighbor’s wife. In a broader sense today, we must recognize the sanctity of family life and marriage—meaning 1 man and 1 woman.

The very fact that we have commandments we must follow opens another issue – freedom of religion. For some time now there have been threats to this in our country. If we are not free to exercise our faith—like not forcing well minded physicians and nurses to participate in abortion or its related evils—our freedom of religion becomes more like a freedom to worship. Do whatever you want in church, but do not bring it to the public square.

Our church has in various documents called some of these issues non-negotiable; there is a hierarchy to our values. Of the items I have already discussed, the sanctity of life (because without life no other rights matter); the sanctity of the family, and the protection of religious freedom are at the top.

So, what does this mean particularly to us right now? We are all in the process of voting—many of you probably already have done so. We must always keep in mind that our faith must come with us when we vote. We must have a well-formed conscience in the voting booth and select those persons or public questions we believe conform most clearly to the commands we are required to live by. This is not, as some might say, forcing our religion on others. Rather, it is protecting our own right to practice our faith.

I have touched on just a few areas of consideration this morning. As I said a few weeks ago, NO ONE, will tell you how to vote from this pulpit. But what we will tell you is to look toward your choices with an eye toward what our faith demands. This is probably one of the most important elections in years. The choices present stark differences—and neither one is perfect. Things were so much easier when we first simply said NO to our children. But please vote with your faith. It is something particularly important to think about this week. God Bless!