Whoever Loves Meets God

The take-home message of today’s Scriptures is whoever loves meets God.

 

One of the Pharisees, a scholar of the law, tested Jesus by asking:  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”     As in last week’s Gospel in asking Jesus:  “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not,”  the Pharisees seek to engage Jesus in debate and to win the argument.  Good luck with that.

 

My nephew Justin who is a lawyer told me he was taught in law school that you never ask a question of a witness in court if you don’t know what the answer is.  It’s too dangerous otherwise.  This scholar of the law asking the question of Jesus was overmatched.  Nonetheless, while meant to test Jesus, the question is very legitimate.  Which commandment is the law is the greatest?

 

Jesus responded:  “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 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.”

 

These two commandments are the currency of God’s kingdom, a currency completely different from last week’s Roman coin and completely different from the self-centered transactions that too often characterize our contemporary way of life.

Jesus’ answer was not a particular law, now even two particular laws.  His answered demanded a new lifestyle, a way of living that draws us so close to God that we become His presence for others.  The law tells us what we have done wrong.  Love tells who we can be.  While this linking of the two great commandments was not unique to Jesus, it does get at the heart of Jesus’ mission and ministry.

 

Jesus is not attempting to do away with the law and the prophets by reducing everything to the so-called new commandment.  This commandment becomes the lens through which everything is to be seen.  It is the interpretative key for understanding all of revelation. 

 

The love command is the guts of Catholic morality.  Church practices and rules are there to help us avoid everything that is opposed to the “love command.”  Sin in our lives is when we do not live up to our baptismal commitment, to our discipleship witness of loving God and our neighbor.  In the Gospel account, the Pharisees understanding of what truth is could be found only in a multitude of laws.  The Gospel affirms the witness of a God of love and a God of hope.  The joy of the Gospel is discovered when we share the merciful love of Jesus with one another.

 

Meaningful discipleship is not found in the mere observance of law.  Meaningful religion is lived out in a triangle of love – love for God, love for others, and love for self.  In that triangle of love is found the secret of a fulfilling life on earth and a foretaste of the life to come.

 

If you ask yourself, what does God want of us, what is God’s priority for us?  God’s priority for us is that we love our neighbor as ourself.   For Jesus, our neighbor is anyone and everyone, unconditionally, no exceptions.  To say again, for Jesus, our neighbor is anyone and everyone, unconditionally, no exceptions.

 

Our intimacy with the Lord will be based on the love and intimacy we have shared with all of God’s people.  The first Scripture reading from the book of Exodus concretizes Jesus’ teaching.  The alien, the orphan and the poor are our neighbors.  Immigrants whether documented or undocumented, saints or sinners, every member of LGBT, your family member whom it is most difficult for you to relate to is your neighbor to be loved and is the barometer of the depth of our love of God.

 

May we be transformed by God’s grace, who desires us to care for all among us who are in need, not just because particular laws govern us but because the love of God and neighbor burns in us.

 

We pray today that we might love God so deeply that we will have no choice but to bring God’s love to those around us.

 

This is not to say all of us are ready to be canonized because we have already mastered the commandment of love, but may it be the desire of our hearts to make love the first requirement of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus.

 

The poet Maya Angelou was once asked what her lifetime goals were.  She answered that she wanted to become a Christian.  Now Maya Angelou was already a Christian.    Her point was that Christianity is an ongoing process of becoming.    Everyday we take steps to become a Christian.

 

In all humility, may all of us identify with the lifetime goal of Maya Angelou and strive always to become more Christian, to live the first requirement of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus – our love of God and our love of one another.

 

With each Eucharist we celebrate, in the Penitential Rite we acknowledge the areas of our life in which Jesus is not yet Lord, the ways that we have not loved God and our neighbor.  Thankfully and gratefully we are the recipients of the merciful love of Jesus, and we commit ourselves to be people who love one another.

 

And so we pray, Lord, let love be the guiding principle of all I say and think.   For our life as a disciple of Jesus requires that we treat all –especially the most vulnerable – with dignity.  Yes we live in a culture and a society that prides itself in the law of individualism and in private property, but we also are given the command to whom more is given, more is to be shared. 

 

Again, the take home message of today’s Scriptures is whoever loves meets God.