Thursday, October 26, 2017

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 29, 2017: You shall love the Lord, your God, and your neighbor as yourself...

Can love effect transformation in your life? 

   From the time of the Book of Exodus, it has been clear that God expects God’s people to have compassion for others.  Having given Moses the Ten Commandments, God proceeds to relate a lengthy series of additional instructions to the prophet, a substantial number of which have to do with the Israelites’ treatment of their neighbors.  You shall not molest or oppress an alien, God intones:  the Israelites must care for widows and orphans alike, as well as for the poor and vulnerable.  Their justice must be God’s justice, with compassion as their first principle.  God has loved them, and so are they to love others.  If God is our strength, as Psalm 18 suggests, we must emulate God’s care for us and give thanks for it by loving all those we meet.

   Jesus will return to this message in Matthew’s Gospel, when he is challenged by the Pharisees to identify which commandment in the law is the greatest.  His response to them – You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind – goes straight to the primacy of love of God and other.  We are, Jesus tells the Pharisees, to live lives of love, with all we have and all we are, holding nothing back.  It is a lesson Paul knows the Thessalonians have mastered, as they have become a model for all believers.  They have taken the Gospel to heart, not just proclaiming the word, but living it, even amidst affliction.

   Are we willing to allow ourselves to be transformed through the love of God?  Are we ready to effect transformation in others?  Are we willing for others to effect transformation in us?  To do so, we must start by recognizing Jesus not only in Eucharist, but in all others around us, and to allow their love to transform our lives as our love and compassion transform theirs.  Only then are we living the essential commandments of our faith.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source:  Wordle

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