29 Oct 2023 – 30th Sunday, (A)
29 Oct 2023 – 30th Sunday, (A)
Our Gospel celebrates the great commandment of love. To love our neighbour as God does, prejudices based on race, religion or colour have to go. The revelation at Mount Sinai prompted a sense of fairness towards others, deeper than specific commandments. Jesus demonstrates a life of utterly unselfish loving, and invites us to make that our guide to life. For St Paul, this imitation of Christ is the core of spirituality
(1) Exodus 22:20-26
The Israelites must show fairness in practical matters
The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the children of Israel this:
You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan.
If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.
If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them.
If you take your neighbour’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbour’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbour cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate.”
Responsorial: Psalm 17:2-4, 47, 51
R./: I love you, Lord, my strength
I love you. Lord, my strength,
my rock, my fortress, my saviour.
My God is the rock where I take refuge;
my shield, my mighty help, my stronghold.
The Lord is worthy of all praise:
when I call I am saved from my foes. (R./)
Long life to the Lord, my rock!
Praised be the God who saves me.
He has given great victories to his king
and shown his love for his anointed. (R./)
(2) 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10
The fervour of the Thessalonian converts encouraged other local churches
Our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead-Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
Gospel: Matthew 22:34-40
Jesus’ summation of morality as the twofold commandment of love
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Doing justice in love
All our texts today suggest one clear and practical principle: loving God involves doing practical justice in our world. But even our superficially Christian society is full of people who show little respect for love or justice. Political and economic life is ruled by values far from those of the Gospel. Greed, and fierce desire for power and profit can be seen in our daily papers. We are closer to the paganism mentioned in Paul’s letter than we may imagine. Today no less than then, the world is hostile to what Jesus represents, and it is hard for us to take a stand even on important issues of justice and compassion. Our Lord shows love of God and genuine love of the other as two basic aspects of the same call. There can never be a contradiction between the two, even though one may sometimes feel trapped in a situation where a particular law of Church or State seems to create a contradiction.
An approach to the second commandment about love could be by reflecting on how we love ourselves. Love of neighbour becomes virtually impossible in the agone of self-hatred in which some fearful, discouraged people can find themselves. Loving the other as oneself only becomes possible if we have, or can grow into, a healthy, sane level of self-appreciation. This is a sound psychological principle, which should be mentioned in our churches even though Christian love transcends all the transient vogues of psychology. Its ideal is the example of Christ himself, with also his commitment to justice for the poor.
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants who have come to live among us in Ireland. We have moved from a mono-cultural to a multi-cultural, multi-racial society. Today’s readings invite us to reflect on how well we receive these strangers, make them feel at home in our society and in our church. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” They are distinct from us, and, often, different from us. The saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,” expresses the evident truth that like attracts like. It is tempting to frequent the company of people like ourselves. Yet, the Lord gathered about himself a community of great diversity. Even within the twelve there was to be found a tax-collector and a zealot, men from opposite ends of the political spectrum. In a similar way, the Spirit of the Lord at work in our lives prompts us to connect with those who are different from us, as well as those who are like us. The one we find initially strange can reveal the Lord to us in surprising ways. We pray for a greater openness to the many ways the Lord comes to us in life.
The heart of the matter
Life is becoming increasingly complex. We value people who have the gift of getting beyond the multiple dimensions of an issue so as to zoom in on the heart of the matter. Such people prevent us from missing the wood for the trees. They are good at separating out what really matters from the things that are less important. They encourage us to invest our energies in what is really worthwhile, rather than allowing them to be dissipated by what is not significant.
Jesus was a person who knew how to go to the heart of the matter. On one occasion someone asked him to intervene in a family dispute about inheritance. In his reply, he ignored the concrete issue and, instead, he called on the person who approached him to “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed” (Lk 12:13-15) . He saw that the real issue was not the details of the particular case but the greed which underlay the dispute.
This capacity of Jesus to get to the heart of the matter is clear from his response to the question put to him by one of the Pharisees in today’s gospel reading, “Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?” In the time of Jesus there were known to be 613 commandments in the Jewish Law. The potential here to miss the wood for the trees was enormous. Preoccupation with the detail of regulations could result in people ignoring what really matters, like straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel (Mt 23:24) . Jesus answered the Pharisee’s question by going straight to the heart of the Jewish law. He was asked if there is one “greatest” commandment, but in reply he named the second greatest commandment as well. For the first commandment, loving the Lord your God with all our heart and soul, is inseparable from the conjoined commandment, of loving my neighbour as myself. For Jesus, what God wants from us above all else is love. There is no genuine love of God unless it finds expression in love of our neighbour. Love of neighbour, in turn, presupposes a healthy self-love, recognising and appreciating myself as fundamentally good, because I am created in the image and likeness of God..
The human side of holiness
No one could disagree with the ideal of loving God and loving one’s neighbour. In preaching this can be a difficulty, in that no one who joins in the Sunday Eucharist could conceivably reject such a basic attitude of the faith. One could politely listen and agree. The celebrant might take the road of spelling out examples of how we might better show love of neighbour, but people are not so eager to hear a harangue about the preacher’s pet sins of omission. Since mere generic ideals could fail to register effectively with many people, the homilist might develop the gospel theme of the one charity that reaches to God and neighbour with the same life; or might instead focus on the second reading.
It is clear that Paul mixed closely with the communities whose lives he shared and the authority of his word seems to have sprung from the quality of his life. His attitudes and work-habits were in tune with the message that he delivered. His commitment to the task was evidenced by the troubles he had to bear, while spreading the good news. There was an intrinsic link between what he said and how he lived. The word spoken gave meaning to the life lived and the quality of the life guaranteed the sincerity of the word. The people of Salonika accepted his message and found that it had a power to change their own outlook on life. Paul names their experience “joy of the Holy Spirit.” They touched the living Spirit of God in the midst of their own lives.
Genuine human concern that touches lives is an effective sacrament of the transcendent love of God. The homilist might look at the mystery of the Christian God from the point of view of God’s transcendence and immanence. The love of God is actually enfleshed in the nitty-gritty of human interpersonal relationships. The authenticity of our religion is guaranteed by the value of our love for real people. One could use the image of the flower that is rooted in the soil; it grows slowly by transforming the elements of the soil in to its own living cells and eventually reaches up to the beauty of the sky with its own form, colour and scent. The one sap enlivens the root, the stalk, the flower and produces the perfume.
A truly Christian life is rooted in the earth and yet reaches up to the mystery of God through living in love. Another possible development might stem from Paul’s notin of the Thessalonians” reputation spreading through the surrounding area. People were drawn to the Christian faith by the way these people were leading their lives. The word of the good news diffused itself quietly through people admiring the way the Christians lived. People can be quick to condemn those who have offbeat values or live a different lifestyle. We can fail to appreciate the faltering efforts others make to cope with the struggles of frail human nature. If we could plumb the depths of meaning in our own personal life histories we might be able to forge more effective link with others. The gift of our humanity, savoured and appreciated, can become mirror and window to the mystery of God for ourselves. It can be more a more effective means of evangelisation than all the hype of religious words that often only confirm the “converted” in their convictions.
Very nice homily, admirable.
Key Message:
Let our life be an example life for others.
Homily:
In a Christian family, the daughter fell into the wrong friendships when she switched schools for higher education. The parents were deeply shaken, but their daughter was not willing to shake off the bad company. They were living in a non-Christian neighbourhood. As this news became known, the parents of the children who were in good company of friends started saying things like “God has blessed me with good children” to the parents of this daughter. They were mocking in different ways and stopped their children from being friends with this daughter. The Catholic parents now had only God and His Heaven. They started devotion to Saint Micheal, the Archangel to defeat the devils that were harassing their daughter. They prayed devotion to Saint Micheal, the Archangel from YouTube. Similarly, they started praying the litany to St. Jude, the patron of hopeless cases, again from YouTube. They started Saint Anthony’s litany from their prayer book. They asked Mamma Mary to keep their daughter in Her Holy hands. They started the Divine Mercy Chaplet meditating on the sufferings of our Lord Jesus. Now which devil can come near this daughter? All devils fled away from their daughter and the daughter was transformed into an always smiling, joyful and obedient child. Now the daughter has a lot of respect among her friends and their parents too.
The friend’s parents who thought that this parent would give up totally on their daughter are now surprised. They realised that this Christian family would achieve greater heights because God was taking care of the family. The other families started saying, “Their God is very powerful”. The friend’s families started taking tips on the actions to be done in bringing up their children. They are leading an example life.
Leading an example life when things are going well is easier when compared to the situation when things are going tough. But these are situations in which God wants us to lead an example life. People learn the Bible when they see their Christian friends practice it rather than by reading the Bible. We also have to teach the Bible to our people by our living. People get the confidence that the promises in the Bible are true only when they see them becoming true in our lives. Otherwise, they will not realise that the promises in the Bible are waiting to be realised in their lives too.
In today’s second reading, the Apostle Paul says to the Thessalonians that they became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaea. What a great testimony!! This is the call for all of us. When we take care of our elderly parents joyfully without any complaints, even when our parents get angry at us for just silly things, we are a living example. Once there was a person who used to make peace with everyone even with those who were difficult to deal with. That person’s testimony – “I used to get angry when people are manipulative and judgmental. Even now I get angry whenever such things happen. I observed that anger was my first reaction to anything that happened out of my choice. I would resolve in my mind never to speak with that person again and to avoid him/her out of my life. But I have a statue of Christ hanging on the crucifix in my room. Whenever I see that, I would realise that our Lord Jesus has forgiven my big sins, why can’t I forgive this small sin of my neighbour? Also I will remember the parable of the unforgiving servant. So I forgive them and try to be happy with them.
When I practiced this I always experience a pattern of two blessings on me:
1. I would receive some sort of blessing whenever I forgive a person in my life.
2. The person who I forgave would start liking me and try to be my friend.
So whenever I feel the anger rising within me, I start this forgiveness process.” This person preaches peace and forgiveness through his example life.
We can set a very good example by being a finisher. The devil is not unhappy when we start a good activity. But he is very sad when we finish a good activity, because we win over him. Hence the challenge comes before we hit the finishing line. So be a finisher. The challenges are all a setup for us to forego the good task. Let us not succumb to it. Let us go ahead and do what we can do, God will complete what we cannot do. The perfect example is our Lord Jesus still proceeding when He was actually falling under the weight of the cross. Our Lord Jesus would not have made it to the finishing line if He had carried the cross alone in His bruised body. He would have realised it but He did not stop. With wounds all over, our Lord Jesus still proceeded. Then God arranged Simon to carry the cross. When we worry about reaching the finishing line, let us remind ourselves that God is preparing a Simon to help us in carrying our cross. So we are not all alone. Let us be the finishers!!
The Apostle Paul was not frightened of the devils, but the devils were frightened of the Apostle Paul. This will be our status when we live with full zeal for love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mother Teresa’s energy, in spite of her sick body, built the Houses of Missionaries of Charity all across the world. Our Lord Jesus carried the cross on His bruised body, not in His healthy body. Even if we are faced with challenging situations like lack of love or sickness, let us live with enthusiasm. Our Lord Jesus Christ will save us.
When the world is running after money, the world needs to witness people running after God. A good testimony: “While I was seeing the face of our Lord Jesus hanging on the cross, I was thinking why I was not earning as much as my friends. Immediately I heard the little voice, “You have Almighty God with you. Why do you worry about money?” After this, I was more joyful. I was not worrying about money.” Another good one – “I was a manager in an IT company. But I was forced to do things which I realised were not right thing. So I moved myself to a lesser technical role, where the non-righteous stuff was not required to be done. I am more concerned about Heaven’s door being opened for me rather than a higher pay grade on this earth”. Though with lesser money, these people are living with more peace. More peace and less money is better than more money and less peace.
On a Friday morning, an elderly person was speaking to a youth about how the youth was planning to spend his Friday evening. The answer came as “movies”. Immediately the elderly person could hear the silent voice saying, “I created mankind to spend some time with me. But I am not there even in their thoughts”. God is longing to spend His beautiful time with us. If we are in love with someone, we long to spend our time with them. Our Almighty Father is also longing to spend His time with us. Our realisation that our God is present, close to us, itself comforts our God.
Our God likes happy prayers. We read in the Holy Bible our Lord Jesus sang with His Apostles. Did we read anywhere that He was crying when He was travelling with His friends in the fishing boats? Let us make our family prayers happy and let us make it interesting for our kids. We can spot out happy hymns which our children will like to sing. If they like dancing let them dance like King David danced before the Lord. Let them be filled with zeal, energy and joy for our Lord. I have seen children trying to escape from family prayer time, mainly because they do not find it interesting. We are building the future church in our families. Let us create a strong foundation in them.
The person who has learnt to live with God is leading a life of example for others.