A note.
The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time was last week. I had a complicated week, and I’m trying to
catch up.
In the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time of
Year A, Jesus continues to confront the Temple elders. Today’s Gospel has the Pharisees questioning
Jesus on the greatest commandment. They
only asked for one, the “greatest,” but Jesus provides His now well-known twofold
reply: To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Fr. Geoffrey Plant in the embedded video (19:03)
below will quote Pope Francis explanation of Jesus’s response:
"The novelty is in his placing these two commandments together—love for God and love for neighbor—revealing that they are in fact inseparable and complementary, two sides of the same coin. You cannot love God without loving your neighbor, and you cannot love your neighbor without loving God.”
Gina Hens-Piazza of the Jesuit magazine, America, identifies the
biblical passages from where Jesus roots His answer:
Jesus is drawing from two different Torah texts here to answer the Pharisees. The commandment to love God comes from Dt 6:5, and the commandment to love your neighbor can be found in Lv 19:18. Jesus brings both together because of his understanding of God, which warrants the intimate oneness between these two seemingly distinct dynamisms: love of God and love of our neighbor.
Hens-Piazza continues explaining a difficulty
I have had with the link between the two commandments.
Over the centuries and, perhaps, even today, some struggle with the notion that love of God and love of neighbor take the form of a commandment. A law requiring one to love seems to contradict the very character and dynamism of love itself. We might justifiably argue that love is not something that can be compelled or mandated. Further, even if one is willing to be obedient to this command, how does one actually respond? After all, the very notion of God is difficult to grasp. Sometimes God is referred to as the “Beyond within our midst,” or the “Ultimate Holy Other” or the “Infinite Reality.” How does one even obey a command to love God, a reality so in excess of our capacity to behold, to say nothing about loving this Divine Being with all of one’s heart, soul and mind?
So what is the answer? Can you force yourself to love an abstract
Being? But Gina finds the answer in a
less than abstract means.
Jesus, who answered the Pharisees regarding the greatest commandment,
is the answer itself. By way of the
Incarnation, Jesus discloses the very revelation of God and the possibility of
loving God as Jesus showed us. His life becomes a concrete manifestation of
God, the divine self.
Today’s Gospel:
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
~Mt: 22:34-40
For the exegetical homily, Fr. Geoffrey Plant provides a full
background.
Fr. Goeffrey:
Pope Benedict made
the observation that “today, the term ‘love’ has become one
of the most
frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach
quite different
meanings.” He writes about the vast
semantic range of the word “love.” That
is certainly true of the way we use the word in the English language. Someone can say, “I love playing sport.” I love my country. I love ice cream. I love my sister; I love my brother. I love you.
I love God…
“We need to ask,”
Pope Benedict says, “are all these forms of love basically one,
so that love, in its
many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or
are we merely using
the same word to designate totally different realities?” I think
we would have to
answer that the word “love” is certainly being used to
designate very
different realities. Loving ice cream is a totally different human
experience from
loving my children, my husband or my wife.
There is ἔρως (erōs). This is love as desire and attraction: the
longing that draws us towards what we find beautiful or good, towards that
which we do not yet possess.
This word does not
appear in the New Testament, and that absence is significant. The
love revealed in
Jesus does not begin with a lack of any kind. God is not drawn
towards us because
something is missing in God. God's love begins from fullness, not
need. It moves
outwards in giving, not inwards in grasping.
Then we have στοργή
(storgē). The word refers to the natural
affection found within a family: between parents and children, or between
siblings. Although the noun itself does
not appear in the New Testament, the reality it describes is clearly recognised
and valued.
There is φιλία
(philia) and the related verb φιλέω (phileō).
These words refer to the love of friendship, warmth and personal
attachment. Both the noun and the verb appear in the New Testament. John's Gospel uses this word to describe the
affection that Jesus has for Lazarus. It names real closeness and tenderness,
the kind of love that grows out of familiarity and shared life.
Precisely because
φιλέω (phileō) normally presupposes affection and personal
attachment, it is not
the word used in the great New Testament commands to love our
neighbour or to love
our enemies. Those commands require a form of love that does
not depend on
attraction or emotional closeness. So while φιλέω (phileō) names
something genuine and
important, it is never used when the New Testament
commands us to love.
Whenever the New Testament commands us to love God, to
love our neighbour,
or to love our enemies, it uses ἀγαπάω (agapaō).
And that brings us to
the word Matthew uses in today’s Gospel: ἀγαπάω (agapaō).
The noun ἀγάπη
(agapē), the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō), and the adjective ἀγαπητός
(agapētos) — what we
might call the ἀγάπη (agapē) family — occur about 320 times in
the New Testament,
and at least one member of the family is found in every book of
the New Testament.
Unlike the language
of friendship or affection, ἀγαπάω (agapaō) does not necessarily
depend upon emotional
warmth or personal attachment. In both the Septuagint and
the New Testament, it
can refer to an attitude and a mode of action rather than simply
an emotion. It is love shown in deliberate action:
seeking the good of the other, acting faithfully towards them, treating them
according to what God requires rather than according to how one happens to
feel. That is why Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,”
is rendered with ἀγαπάω (agapaō) in the Septuagint, and why Jesus’ command to
love our enemies uses the same verb.
The point is not that
this love is colder or morally superior. It is that this is the kind of
love that can be
commanded. It can be lived out even when affection is absent.
Indeed, it is
precisely in such circumstances that its true character becomes most
apparent. A person
can forgive, refrain from vengeance, act justly and pray for
another’s good
without feeling warmth or closeness towards that person.
The difficulty is with English diction that only has one word to signify
all the multiple uses of the word, “love.”
For the pastoral sermon (not a homily) I’m turning to SOLT (Society of
Our Lady) again, this time to Fr. Brady Williams.
Fr. Brady:
In this 30th Sunday
of ordinary time Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees the Sadducees the scribes
and the lawyers who asked him a very demanding question; they asked him what's
the greatest commandment? Now there were
600 different prescriptions and laws and asking Jesus to boil it down, to
whittle it down to what's the most important thing, what's the central thing, and
Jesus is going to say it's love: to love God with all your heart mind and soul
and to love your neighbor as yourself.
When we reflect in
our own life do we recognize have I loved God with everything I've got with my
whole heart my whole mind my whole soul? We imagine in a family that's talked about
God and loving God with our whole heart mind and soul that it eventually quoted
in a sense kind of seeps in deep down and takes root in the heart of the person. What do we talk about the most we recognize
it that's the greatest thing in our life love and loving God with our whole
heart mind and soul that's the most important thing and do we see that
reflected in our life because our love for God constantly grow more and more
and more intense.
GK Chesterton once in
his very British wit said the Bible tells us to love our neighbor and to love
our enemy; this is probably because generally they are the same person. Love really is to will the good of the other
person. The greatest good that we can
will for someone else of course is eternal life. See once we have realized that we have been
loved intensely by God not because of anything we have done or accomplished or
how good we are or even how bad we are we are loved by God then that love in
turn flows out to love for our neighbor.
Jesus is going to
take these two Commandments, and he's going to boil it down to one: to love one
another as I have loved you, and he's going to show that love by giving his
life on the cross for us; that's the love that each of us have; that's the love
that each of us is to give.
What we have received, we are to give.
Sunday Meditation: “The
whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
This is so beautifully done, by Lauren and David Moore.
Immaculate Mary, your
praises we sing.
You reign now in
Heaven with Jesus, our King.
Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria!
Ave, Ave, Maria!
In Heaven, the
blessed your glory proclaim.
On earth we, your
children, invoke your fair name.
Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria!
Ave, Ave, Maria!
We pray for our
Mother, the Church upon earth.
And bless, Holy Mary,
the land of our birth.
Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria!
Ave, Ave, Maria!
Ave Maria, our blessed Mother!
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