Cycle A - Year II:
26 October 2014: 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Liturgical color: Green)
Matthew 22:34-40
Love: the greatest commandment!
The joke is that laws are meant to be broken. But when lawmakers themselves become lawbreakers, society is in serious trouble. Because nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
In this Sunday's reading, our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us about the greatest and the first of all the laws.
The Gospel narratives take us once again to an encounter between Jesus and a group of Pharisees. They have been attempting to find a reason to have Him arrested but without success. This time they use lawyer to try to entrap Jesus. The lawyer asked Jesus: "Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?"
We are familiar with Jesus' answers:
"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." (Mt. 22:37-39)
Thus, Jesus reduces all the law to just two commandments, "love God", and "love the neighbor." The word "neighbor" here means especially whoever is in need.
Jesus is teaching us that love is at the heart of the commandments. Love is the heart of personal relationships. Love is at the core of Christianity. Because the very motivation of Christian behavior is not to be a law feared for fear of punishment, but a person loved, the person of God, the person of the neighbor.
When we begin to love, we look at the world around us very differently, we appreciate new things and we make sacrifices that seem small for the sake of the beloved. Love transforms our lives for the better.
In other words, a person who genuinely loves God also love his fellows. Because they are brothers and sisters, children of the same Father, and redeemed by the same precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
All our external worship and piety becomes empty and meaningless if it does not express our internal loving attitude. And without such love in our hearts, following or observing God's commandments become burdensome.
For Christians, the heart of our faith is the love of God, which is shown concretely in the love for others, especially the poor and the helpless. Love then is the very foundation of our Christian living.