What must I do to
inherit eternal life?
All of our readings for this Sunday point to a pretty good
answer to this question, because, as Moses tells the people in Deuteronomy, what God expects or requires of us is pretty
clear: keep his commandments. And what are his commandments? They can be summarized in one word: love.
Love God; love your neighbor. We
already know this – it is something very
near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts – we just have to
embrace it with all that is in us. It’s
not really about “how much” we love, so much as it is about whether our hearts
are open to God and to other, and our mouths are ready to speak the good news
with conviction, encouraging all to seek
God so that their hearts may revive!
(Psalm 69). And the Letter to the Colossians expands upon our understanding of that good news: in him
all things hold together. If we are
looking for connection, we will find it in Jesus, love expressed perfectly, the
consummate example of what it looks like to keep
God’s commandments perfectly. Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible
God, Paul says – and thus, he is also the image of fullness, God’s desire to share his love with us.
Luke’s Gospel brings this all home explicitly: Love
the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself, Jesus tells the scholar
of the law. Do this and you will live. Jesus illustrates his point with the story of
the Good Samaritan, but one wonders if the scholar understands the depth of the
answer he is given, which boils down to this:
If you live love to its fullest, you will have life that is greater than
just breathing; you will have life that transcends this space and time; indeed,
you will begin to enter heaven. Any
animosity toward other is inconsistent with God’s fundamental law of love; the
Samaritan clearly knows what God requires of him and is committed to it. Jesus invites us to greater connection in his
exhortation that we strive to live God’s love, an effort that will offer us
glimpses of participation of heaven on earth.
Do this and you will live…
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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