30th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cycle A)

October 26, 2008

by Reverend Deacon Lawrence A. St. Onge

The religious leaders in Jesus’ time were constantly trying to trip him up. If you recall in last week’s gospel, the Pharisees tried to trip up Jesus with their question about whether or not it was legal to pay taxes to the Romans. Right after that the Sadducees, those who did not believe in an afterlife, also tried to trip up Jesus with the question about resurrection and whose wife the woman who had had seven husbands would be. Jesus replied that in heaven there is no marriage, but there certainly is an afterlife, because God had called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He is the God of the living and not the dead. Thus, Jesus sidestepped the Sadducees, and once again astonished the people.

In this week’s gospel we hear: “When the Pharisees heard that he 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?’”

Besides the Ten Commandments that God had given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, the Pharisees, who were of the priestly class, had, over time, created an additional 613 commandments. However, there was no agreement as to what their ranking was. Logically, however, it stands to reason that one of them must be the most important from which all others descend.

In response to the Pharisees’ question, we hear Jesus say: “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.”

In the English language the word “love” is an all inclusive word. But, in classical Greek, however, there are 3 definitions of the word “love;” they are, eros, which is physical love; philios, which is the love of family; and agape, which is divine love – the love of God. The ancient Hebrews had attempted to try and conform human love and all its imperfections into a code of law that spelled out their obligations and prohibitions concerning God, family, and neighbor. One of the results of this was that the Law, itself, became a basic object of devotion, as each successive generation tried to keep its teaching more and more perfectly. This became the tragedy of the Pharisees, because their love was so utterly focused on the law, itself, that they ultimately failed to see how little of their love was actually left over for God and neighbor.

Jesus did not, in the historical sense, invent the “love command”, or the “Golden Rule” as we often call it. The command to love God comes from the Book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, one of the first 5 books of the Old Testament called the Torah by the Jews. It is not primarily a feeling, but rather, refers to the faithfulness of the Jews to the covenant relationship that had been established between them and God – therefore, it was a matter of willing and doing. The command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves comes from the Book of Leviticus, also a part of the Torah. But, what Jesus did, however, was to take from the great 10 Commandments and the additional 613 Pharisaic laws, two focal points and wove them together to create a neat, compact, and comprehensive summary of what is essential to our living and life: the love of God and of neighbor, which were precisely what the Pharisees most often missed. This was not a “new” understanding, but what was new about this Greatest Commandment, was not the ideas or the wording, but the combination of these two instructions into a unified theory about the relationship between God’s law and God’s love. Jesus also declared that all of God’s revelation to us (the whole law and the prophets) depends on these two commandments. This is the Greatest Commandment because it is the foundation and the key to interpreting and understanding the entire bible. Jesus provides us with the foundation upon which every Christian must build his or her understanding of the Christian Life. Love of God and neighbor must motivate and guide everything we, as Christians, say and do.

The command to love God is not actually a command to do something; it is a command to be something. It is an expression of who we are. We are creatures created by God to love God. That is our whole essence, our purpose, our goal in life. Everything outside of that is, in a real sense, useless. Life’s reality is that we spend our whole lifetime getting our various “loves” in order so that when we die, we can love God with our whole being.

Our living and life is not just about doing what God wants, or not doing what God hates, because God is not some cosmic, super cop in the sky; but rather, it is surrendering our selves to God totally and without any reservation. No other power should have control over us. No other loyalty should supersede this primary commitment. Our daily decisions of living and life should revolve around God’s will, just as our whole week should center on the celebration of Sunday Mass - our little Easter. Either we belong to God or we don’t. Just as you can’t be a little married, you can’t give just a portion of yourself to God – it is an all or nothing proposition.

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke often of “the beloved community,” a society united by mutual caring and concern rather than on court orders and mandates. In today’s second reading St. Paul used similar principles in providing himself as an object lesson for how he expected his small church communities to behave. His love was infectious; his example created offspring who likewise “loved” their way, so to speak, into the greater society.

If we are serious about evangelization – the spread of the Good News of the gospel – which is the call each of us received through our baptism, then we need to exemplify the total and absolute love of God and neighbor in our living and life, and then, our fellow citizens, who are always hungry for love and hope, will be attracted to us like moths to a brilliant flame.

Let us pray that through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that our love of God and neighbor may be a shining beacon to all those still in darkness; that it may be said of us – They are Christians, for look how they love one another.