Love

Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Ps 84 (83): 10-11 Turn your eyes, O God, our shield; and look on the face of your anointed one; one day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

Collect O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Ezechiel 37:1-14; Psalm 24; Matthew 22:34-40

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:34-40)

Love Our Lord had been triumphant in debate. In the same chapter as our Gospel passage today, we read that “the Pharisees went off and began to plot how they might trap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, accompanied by Herodian sympathizers” with their trick question about the religious legality of paying taxes to the Roman authority. Whatever answer Jesus gave, they thought, they would have him. His reply confounded them: “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Then “that same day some Sadducees” came with their question — a puzzle about the woman who married seven times. How could there be a resurrection if she had seven husbands to live with at that great Day? Once again, they were silenced, and the crowd was held spellbound by Christ’s teaching. We read that “when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered in a body” before him. So while on the previous occasion they had sent their disciples with the trap question they had prepared, this time they came themselves and together — perhaps for mutual support and to pit their united intellects against the supposed prophet. The question posed to him this time was a fundamental one, and it was a lawyer among them who put it. It concerned the Law, and which of its commandments was the greatest. The fact was that Christ by his actions and example was calling into question their own teaching on the Law, and the religious weight of the numerous prescriptions that were handed on and enforced by the scribes and Pharisees. Christ disregarded the elaborate and quasi ceremonial washing before meals. He ignored their insistence on the way the Sabbath rest was to be observed, himself curing on the Sabbath and ordering those cured to take up their mats on the Sabbath day and go home carrying them. His disciples were allowed by him to pick ears of corn on the Sabbath. These matters were of great moment for them. What, then, was the greatest commandment of the Law? It was an important encounter.

Christ immediately quoted from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. As such, he was drawing from inspired writings that were accepted by all — by the Pharisees and the Sadducees — and which were commonly attributed to Moses himself. The teaching of Moses was taken as contained in the Pentateuch and it was this that our Lord immediately cited. The first of all the commandments is, Christ tells them, that which is stated in Deuteronomy 6: 5. The Lord alone is God, and you shall love him with all your heart, soul and strength. This, presented as from the mouth of Moses himself, follows the text of the Ten Commandments according to the version given in this book. It also follows God’s directive to Moses that he transmit his commands to the people. Deuteronomy is clear that Moses taught that the observance of God’s commandments was to be a work of love. This was the true Mosaic spirit, and this was the first thing God required of his people in the commandments he had given them. Though our Lord was not asked for a “second” commandment, he proceeded to give it because it related to what stood high in his own teaching: man’s dealings with his neighbour. This itself shows how important this is in Christ’s revelation. Our Lord lit upon a single sentence in what was a multitude of prescriptions in the book of Leviticus, and all of them were commands given by God to Moses — though not ranked in order of importance. Christ firmly identified which of all of them was of pre-eminent importance, surpassed only by the command to love God with all one’s heart. It was that contained in the second part of a specific verse, 19:18: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. So in his reply to the assembled scribes and Pharisees — the masters and leaders of religious practice in the nation — Christ gave the key to the interpretation of the Law of Moses. The Law of God given to Moses and explained by Moses himself to the chosen people of God was fundamentally a law of love: love for God himself and love for neighbour as oneself.

The exemplar of the teachings of Moses, the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, is Jesus Christ. He is not merely yet another prophet, nor merely the greatest of them. Indeed, he is not merely another Moses, nor merely the one who, as “The Prophet” whom Moses foretold, surpasses Moses himself. He is the Son of God and the Redeemer of man. Our calling is to contemplate him, learn from him, and with the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit, to become more and more like him in love — love for God and love of neighbour. Let us make that our daily project, then!

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (Ezechiel 37:1-14)

The Promise of the Sanctifier One of the most striking of the Old Testament prophecies is that in which Ezechiel is granted a vision of the condition of God's people. They are a valley full of bones (Ezechiel 37:1-14). But the prophecy itself is about the power of God and how God will manifest his power in his mercy. These bones will take life and will become an immense army through the breath coming from God. This powerful breath coming as a gift of God is surely a portent of the Holy Spirit who would come to Christ’s disciples and make of them a new people of God, Christ's Church, and through the ministry of the Church and the Sacrament of Baptism he would come to mankind. He comes to give life where there is little or no life.

We have been given that Holy Spirit, and we ought therefore look upon our weakness, especially our spiritual weakness, with hope and optimism born of faith in the power of God. God shows us his power in his deeds of mercy. The greatest deed of divine mercy is the gift and the work of our sanctification, to which we are all called. Every day we ought begin again the great quest of life, with high aims and great desires, the quest for personal sanctity. It will come through our daily efforts and the grace of God.

(E.J.Tyler)

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