Sunday October 31, 2021. Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, October 31 2021
Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
(1) Deuteronomy 6:2-6
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
Moses said to the people: “You and your children and your children’s children, should fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.”
Responsorial: from Psalm 18
R./: I love you, Lord, my strength
I love you, O Lord, my strength,
O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. (R./)
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the Lord, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies. (R./)
The Lord lives! And blessed be my rock!
Praised be God my saviour.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed. (R./)
Hebrews 7:23-28
Christ our high priest can never lose his priesthood
The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself.
Mark 12:28-34
Which commandment is the first of all?
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself,’-this is much more important that all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
With all your heart
At first sight, today’s gospel seems to contain nothing new or startling that was not already known by the Jews of the Old Testament. Indeed the words, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind,” were words written on the heart of every Jew, and to this day they form part of the daily prayer a devout Jew is required to say. This prayer is referred to as the Shema, because it begins with the Hebrew words, “Shema Yisrael,” meaning “Listen Israel.” “Listen Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord,” and it continues with the words just quoted. And yet, there is a certain paradox about today’s gospel reading, in that it tells us that love of God is realised by our love for each other.
In other words, our love of God is illusory if it stops short with God, if it does not result in our loving each other, reaching out to everyone without exception, even our enemies. But then, a word of caution, love of neighbour, if it is divorced from love of God, can well become refined self love. For one can easily end up loving others purely for the response one gets from those loved, for the feeling of satisfaction and self-gratification one derives from being generous and kind to them. A Jewish Rabbi, named Hillel, a renowned scholar, a spiritual and ethical leader of his generation, who had a great following just before the birth of Christ, when asked, “Which is the greatest commandment?,” gave the famous reply, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary.”
Jesus, however, stated that love of God linked with love of neighbour jointly form the greatest commandment. Commenting on that, the advice of St Augustine was, “Love God first, and then do what you will,” meaning that if we love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, then we cannot but be obedient to his will, which wants others to share in that love. St John, the evangelist, who saw all the events of Christ’s life on earth in terms of love, and kept preaching about this virtue to the early Christians, to the extent that they became wearied of it, and asked him to talk about something else, St John in his first letter puts it forcibly like this, “Anyone who says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, is a liar, for how can a man who does not love the brother that he can see, love God whom he has never seen. So this is the commandment that he has given us, that anyone who loves God must also love his brother” (1 Jn 4:20f).
If we embrace this commandment, if we try and put it into practice, as did the saints, then we will be doing something which is truly radical, which to the non-Christian outsider will often be seen as odd, a seeming contradiction, difficult to understand. These seeming contradictions abound in our faith. For we believe that life comes from death, that gain comes from loss, that receiving comes from giving, and that Christ had to die and come to life again that we might share a new life with him in heaven. We profess to be followers of Christ, who made a complete offering of himself to the Father – “Not my will but yours be done” – who gave his life, his energies, his time in the service of others, who returned to his Father devoid of any earthly goods – the clothes he had worn ceasing to be his before he yielded up his spirit, having being made over by lots into the possession of his executioners.
All this does not imply that we have to tread exactly the same path as Christ. What it does indicate, however, is that our surrender to God does not mean that we retreat into a paradise of unreal spirituality. It means that if we love God, then we have to concern ourselves with others, with the members of our family and community. It means that we must rise above ourselves, a and our own interests, and become convinced from Christ’s words that St Paul ,has given us, that “there is greater happiness in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35).
“The world is too much with us,” the poet Wordsworth wrote, “late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” We pass this way but once, and while we are on our way let us do as much good as we possibly can with our God-given powers, the gifts that each of us has, in serving God and others. But always keep in mind as well the promise of Jesus (Jn 15:5), “Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty,” and because of the presence of Jesus, this fruit will last.
How is the Mass a Sacrifice?
Sacrifice is a common notion in everyday existence. We speak of people sacrificing themselves, their time, their energy, their lives. Wherever such sacrifice obtains it is always the source of new life, the mother who stays up all night to care for her ailing child. The sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary was like that. This is the point that is being driven home in the continuous readings from Hebrews over the past and coming Sundays. The sacrifice of Jesus was all-sufficient and complete because of him who offered it, the perfect priest and at the same time the perfect victim, perfectly human and humanly perfect. The Son of God and the Son of Mary. His sacrifice on Calvary and its acknowledgement by the Father in raising his Son from the dead to his right hand in heaven makes him a priest for ever. His sacrifice endures forever, He lives on in the heavenly sanctuary to make intercession for us.
The sacrifice and the intercession are symbolically represented on the altar in bread and in wine. Because we say a thing is symbolic it doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. In a sense it’s more real than the real thing. A shy lover who gives a rose to the loved one is saying more by means of the rose than he ever could express by word of mouth. The rose expresses and contains the reality of his love. It becomes a symbol.
The bread on the altar becomes the body broken for us, the blood poured out for us. The bread and the wine are symbols expressing and containing the reality of sacrifice. The reality is more than the reality of sacrifice. It’s the whole reality of Christ, of his Paschal Mystery, of his passion, death, resurrection and glorification. The Christ who has come in the flesh, is coming now in bread and in wine and will come at the end of time in glory. The whole reality is made present by the power of God’s Word. It wasn’t just a man face “Superstar’) who said, “this is my Body,” “this is my Blood.” It was the Word made flesh who said it, the Word through whom all things were made, through whom creation came into being. Neither are the words spoken out of the blue. They are spoken in the context of remembering, making the memorial. We remember and we ask God to remember. And in the Bible when God remembers, he does something. Mary in her Magnificat declares how God has chosen her his lowly servant, remembering his mercy
The element of sacrifice is mentioned in all the Eucharistic prayers. It comes with the prayer of remembering which is the first one after the supper narration. In Eucharistic Prayer II, the celebrant says “In memory of his death and resurrection,” and then adds: “we offer you, Father, this life-giving bread, this saving cup.” Watch out for it in the other Eucharistic prayers and make the offering of yourself, of your life, “the living sacrifice of praise” along with the offering of Christ himself. What the Mass is all about is summed up in a terse phrase contained in one of the documents which followed on the Vatican II Liturgy Constitution. The Mass is described as “a memorial sacrifice and a meal.”
The Soul of Life
“Complex,” “authoritarian,” “slow to adapt,” are some inadequate ways of describing our church. We should declare more frankly that it’s all about love, really, just as Moses so marvellously said.
Cut to the core — get to the point! What is our religion really about? Well, the eternal, loving God has loved us into being, and wants us to love, in our turn, fully, unconditionally, with all our heart and strength.
Jesus quotes Moses for the first half of his reply.. perhaps the deepest part.. but he stops us from sliding into false mysticism by adding part two: the daily application – loving the people right next door.
It’s a lifelong task, to love that next-door neighbour; a challenge to know how to do it, to re-start doing it, after a lapse. But it’s part of the very soul of Christian living, and why we need our Eucharistic food.
So what is the real purpose of human life? It’s never been better expressed than in this double commandment that gets to the heart and soul of things.
Many would welcome a word on the love principle applied to concrete examples, within their real-life contexts (family, work, neighbourhood, employer-labour relations, social involvement, school, church, citizenship, environment, and international issues of conflict and co-operation.) Married couples might also be glad if the “love as oneself” were applied to conjugal relations, family planning and dealing with conflict at home. But since next Sunday’s readings treat of compassion and generosity, we might postpone most of the practical examples until then, and today focus on the ideal of love as the core of Christian morality.
“Which is the greatest commandment?” was a reasonable question for that Jewish teacher to ask of Jesus. In our Catholic tradition, we often feel the need for a simple guideline as to which doctrines are central, and which are relatively secondary. Without rejecting any Church teaching, we need to know which of them express the core of our faith.) Still more was a rule of thumb required in the Jewish tradition. Under a system which listed over six hundred religious laws and regulations, even the most earnest person would fail sometimes to keep them all. So it was vital to distinguish the main duties from purely trivial matters. In answer, Jesus combined the two highest commands of the Old Testament and gave them new force by relating them so closely to each other. There is no genuine love of God without love for our neighbour; and there can be no sustained love of neighbour without an underlying love for God.
The Beatles’ song “All You Need Is Love” stated the same truth, in a way that sounded flippant and irresponsible in the sex-charged pop-culture in the 1960s. Seen in a more positive light, the slogan does sum up the Gospel attitude towards morality. In a classic of spirituality, Dom Eugene Boylan characterised Jesus as “This Tremendous Lover.” Love is the most precious and powerful quality in a human life. It is the one value that outlasts all others (1 Cor 13) ; 50 central, indeed, that it best describes God himself: God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God (1 Jn 4:16.)
How does the love principle interact with the Ten Commandments, which both Jews and Christians have long revered as expressing central moral concerns? Echoing Jesus, Paul would see the Decalogue as spelling Out some of the concrete implications of love; for “he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law” (Rom 13:8). Still, that sentence cannot be simply reversed. There’s a real shift of emphasis from the Decalogue’s “Thou shalt not” to the Christian “Thou shalt.” Of course we must refrain from murder, theft, adultery and lying under oath; but Jesus asks for much more than that, both by his own example (“love one another as I have loved you’) and by the boundless compassion of the Good Samaritan about whom we are told: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). It is not enough to refrain from sin; we are to keep the commandments in a spirit of love.
But, is it possible to love God “with all your heart?” Or to cherish another as much as oneself? The love-command is not some regulation that can be simply monitored, and no one can say “I have kept it perfectly. What else is required of me?” Rather, it offers a target, an orientation, a yardstick against to measure the whole thrust of one’s life-style and goals. Its fulfilment is only partial and provisional, always in need of renewal and reassessment. Jewish tradition tells of old Rabbi Eleazar, who bravely resisted the foreign king’s decree that all Jews must conform to pagan ways. He was prepared to die a martyr, rather than submit by eating the prescribed piece of pork. His disciples tried desperately to save the old rabbi. Eleazar need only pretend to conform, in order to be spared a painful death. But he refused this way out. “All of my life,” he said, “I have wanted to understand what this means, To love Him with all your soul and with all your strength. And now that lam on the point of finding out, will you persuade me to draw back?’
At funerals, we discuss the encounters we have had with the deceased in order to capture something of their personality. On the grave-stone, too, we often try to express some great value that they cherished. What really counts in God’s sight is, How much did they love? Wouldn’t it be great if, when all the speeches are over, the final verdict on our life was, “Kind, thoughtful, devoted to others, committed to love?”
How is the Mass a Sacrifice?
Much more needs to be made here of the fact that in becoming the victim of the sacrifice Jesus has reversed the role of the priest of that ancient world. That had always been about the shedding of the blood of some person or creature other than the priest.
Lay people will never hear their clergy explaining the common priesthood of the faithful until the full implications of this transition are grasped.
Jesus’s offering of himself meant that Christian sacrifice completed a transformation of the practice and meaning of religious sacrifice in the ancient world – an evolution that is evident even from the Old Testament readings in the Missal, and especially the deeply troubling Abraham and Isaac story in Genesis 22.
Anthropologists debate whether the practice of blood sacrifice may have originated in scapegoating – i.e. the agreed deflection of community tensions onto a chosen individual who was e.g. a stranger, or somehow different and vulnerable (as in e.g. the ghastly practice of lynching).
This is made plausible even in the Gospel by the remark attributed to the Temple High Priest Caiaphas in John 11:50 – “It is to your advantage that one man should die for the people, rather than that the whole nation should perish”.
This too underlines the reversal of the priestly role that Jesus accomplishes – it is an anti-scapegoating, anti-lynching, anti-bullying role – a role in solidarity with all victims.
Secondly the ordained priest needs to note that Jesus’s priesthood and sacrifice was completed NOT by the Holy Thursday ritual – a symbolic liturgical prefiguring of the crucifixion – but by a decidedly real ordeal, the crucifixion itself – in the world outside that liturgical space.
It follows that celebration of the liturgical Eucharist does not on its own complete the Christian priestly obligation: there remains the ‘taking up of the cross’ in the real world that all Christians occupy – outside the liturgical spaces of today.
It is because this connection is typically NOT seen or made that too many Masses today lack ‘connection’ and persuasive meaning for those who are not in the habit of Mass-going – especially in younger Irish generations.
As Michael McGuckian SJ explains in ‘The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’* the ‘common priesthood of the faithful’ was plain for all to see in the early church Eucharistic celebration – in the Offertory procession. The offertory gifts were originally not just the bread and wine needed by the priest for the consecration and communion: they included also the ‘alms’ brought for the poor. In the loss of this symbolism – with e.g. the church-porch SVP collection NOT going to the altar – the ‘sacrifice of the people’ aspect of the Offertory is seriously diminished if not lost altogether.
Worse, if the ‘mass envelopes’ do go to the altar at that point, clergy leave themselves unnecessarily open to the perception that essentially the Mass-going obligation of the people is all about the upkeep of the clerical institution and its buildings – and that ‘the Church’ exists solely to maintain itself.
Finally, there is also a loss of meaning to the dismissal at the end of Mass – especially if the priest enunciates ‘Go and proclaim the Gospel’ without ever explaining how in the ongoing context outside. The disastrously non-synodal Irish Catholic Church of 1965-2021 is ‘celebrating’ the Mass in often mostly empty churches because no connection is made with ongoing challenges in the world outside.
That so many are in fact ‘giving of themselves’ in different contexts (work, the home, etc.) is obvious. So why is it not obvious to so many Catholic clergy that this is indeed the exercise of the common priesthood that Jesus also modelled for us lay people?
All it would take to transform our Masses would be the conscious inclusion in the Offertory of all of the ongoing sacrifices and sufferings of the people of God, as well as any alms donated that day, and the understanding of Communion as a replenishing of the grace needed for the sacrifices of the people now to follow at the dismissal.
How can the Mass be a true ‘celebration’ unless ‘the people’ understand their own priesthood, and hear the priest acknowledge that in giving to, and suffering on behalf of, others they are already exercising it – and proving that the church is not simply a self-maintenance outfit?
Key Message:
Jesus still asks the same question He asked Peter, “Do you love me? Then take care of my people”.
Homily:
The takeaway from the first reading:
We may wonder when we are following God’s words, why we are not experiencing our Lord’s promises. Why am I still not ‘inland flowing with milk and honey’? – this may be financial freedom, good health, and so on.
Today’s first reading covers one among many reasons for this. We need to follow God’s words ‘diligently’. The keyword is ‘diligently’. But nowadays we follow God’s word conveniently. Like we do not want to bless our enemies wholeheartedly, but since God’s word is asking us to bless our enemies, we will do it vocally. God listens to our hearts more than our words. God’s word asks us to increase our perseverance. In reality, we have more perseverance when our needs are increased, less perseverance when our needs are lesser. God’s words tell us not to lie. But we like to escape our current situation. James 1:26 says “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.”, but we still enjoy the moment when someone gossips about someone else to us.
When the Jewish elders begged Jesus to cure the centurion’s servant, they said, “He is worthy for You to grant this to him; for he loves our nation and it was he who built us our synagogue”. The centurion was diligent in loving God our Almighty Father, that is why he had taken an extra step to build a synagogue for worshipping God our Father. (Luke 7:2). When the centurion needed special grace from our Lord Jesus, his good acts were brought before Jesus. Similarly, our good angels will carry our good acts to Jesus to speak for us.
If we love God and follow His commandments diligently, then we will arrive in our promised land flowing with milk and honey.
The takeaway from the second reading:
God appointed His only Son as our high priest, for doing penance for our sins. Our Lord Jesus does not keep rams and goats with Him for sacrificing for our sins. But our Lord Jesus pours out His precious blood and shows His every wound in front of our Almighty Father as penance of our sins.
When we sin with our eyes, our Lord Jesus shows His wounded eyes. When we sin with evil thoughts, our Lord Jesus shows His head bleeding with a crown of thorns. When we sin with our hands, our Lord Jesus shows His nail-pierced hands. When we sin with our legs, our Lord Jesus shows His nail-pierced legs.
There is a wound in the body of our Lord Jesus for cleansing every sin we commit. Our loving God knows that it is challenging for us to live without sin. So He has made our Lord Jesus bear the penance of each of our sins in His body. The precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ plead for forgiveness of our sins, whenever we repent and ask forgiveness of our sins.
For each sin, there is a cleansing wound in the body of our loving Lord Jesus Christ!!
The takeaway from Gospel reading:
The Commandments of our God are more a privilege than a commandment. When we love our Lord Jesus, then we become one among His flock and He becomes our Good Shepherd. He promises to lay down His life for His sheep, which means our sins are forgiven. He leads us to green pastures and streams, which means our needs will be met and we will have good rest. He will protect us from wild animals – which means He will protect us from the works of the devil and the attacks of our enemies.
We should use the promises of God like a sleeping pillow. We should rest our worried head on the promises of God, knowing that He has already signed a document (Holy Bible) with all His promises written in it, for those who love Him.
Our Lord Jesus asked the Apostle Peter, “Peter do you love me?” thrice. And for all the times, He has only one quick answer – “Take care of my sheep”. Effectively our Lord Jesus was saying if you are following the First commandment you need to follow the second commandment.
When someone asked Saint Mother Teresa, “From where did you get all your power from?”, Mother Teresa took him to the Blessed Sacrament, pointed to the Blessed Sacrament, and said, “From here I receive all my power”. It is the love that Mother Teresa had towards our loving Lord Jesus, made her love and serve the needy society.
When we read the biography of all our saints, we see that all have carried the cross of our loving Lord Jesus and bore the wounds of our Lord Jesus. So every cross we carry, every wound is all for the love of our Lord Jesus.
Tips for implementing the Takeaways:
1. “What can I do to make you happy Jesus?” may be a simple question that may come from us every day. Jesus will be happy that we are thinking about making Him happy. We can pray for the whole world by praying the “Divine Mercy Chaplet” or “The Rosary” or any prayer and say “Jesus, this is just for You”. We can do a small act of love like serving lunch for our family member, whom we usually neglect, and say to our Lord, “Jesus, this is just for You”. We can take care of the sick for a few hours just for the love of Jesus.
2. Children are getting addicted to many bad habits and parents are extremely worried. When we love God with all our heart, God will save our children, even though we are unable to save them directly. Let us consider the case of Ishmael, the first son of Father Abraham. Ishmael was never a part of God’s plan for Abraham. When Abraham had to send out Ishmael and his mother unwillingly, because of the force from Sarah, God took care of Ishmael. The Bible tells that ‘God heard the cries of Ishmael’. Though both Ishmael and his mom cried out to God, the cries of Ishmael reached God because he was the son of Abraham who loved God. We may feel worried about our children who are not on the right path. But when we love God, God will take care of our children, even when we cannot help them out.
3. There are simple ways to love our neighbours. We can begin just by appreciating people and giving them gifts of love. The world has a lot of people suffering in depression without anyone to share a word of consolation or appreciation. Every week we can make at least 10 people happy by giving them words of appreciation and comforting them with love.
4. When we love God our hearts will involuntarily beat for Him. When a young girl, who wanted to join the Sisters of Charity, approached Mother Teresa, Mother asked the girl to clean the wounds of the leper. But the girl was not able to do it. She said to the loving Mother, “Please give me any other job like cooking, cleaning, or washing clothes. Even if I am given a million dollars, I will not do it”. And Mother replied, “I will not do it either. But I will do it only for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. True, the love of our Lord Jesus Christ makes us love the unlovable with sacrificial love.”
5. When we love our Lord Jesus, then we will have the Holy Spirit with us. When we do not know what to do the Holy Spirit will guide us. We may have financial difficulties or children not doing well, but we can be peaceful since our big brother, our Lord Jesus, will take care of our issues. He has promised that when He is able to feed the birds of the air, won’t He take care of us?
Love for God made Jesus bear wounds for our sins in His body. Similarly, our love for Jesus should enable us to bear the everyday wounds in our body too.