Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 10/25

Dear friends,

This Sunday’s Gospel is a very familiar one – familiar to our memory but perhaps, may be a little unfamiliar to our hearts. Jesus gives us a not easy answer for a not easy question: “What is the greatest commandment?”

 We all know that we cannot force ourselves or anyone to love. However, we also know that love is part of our human nature for God, who is love himself, created us in his own image and likeness. Perhaps what Jesus is telling us here is that we follow our true nature – that which of producing the image of Christ in us, the image we received in baptism – the image of a child of the Father. Christ always looked up to the Father, glorifying him and giving him thanks, loving him by becoming obedient to him, even to death on a cross. That being said, “loving is no longer a command but a response to God who loved us first” in Christ. God always takes the first initiative; He first loved us. That is why, St. Augustine writes in his Confessions, “our hearts are restless until it rests in you.” Only in loving God can we find rest and Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is showing us where the green pasture is – in loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and all our mind.

I would like to make a side note here that this love is not just a mere “emotion” or a romantic love. Jesus asks us to love God with all our being. This also means to know Christ, his teachings, and his Words, for no one can love what he does not know. God wants us to love him with our intellect and our will.

 There is also a second part of the commandment. Jesus adds something to which the scholar of the law did not ask. Jesus tells him that the second commandment is to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love our neighbours? I guess, the first question to ask before this should be, “how do you love yourself?” Some love themselves excessively and it becomes vanity. Some do not even love themselves and can hardly forgive themselves when they make mistakes. So, this cannot be the best criteria to love the others. I’d like to go back, then, to the Last Supper episode, in the Eucharistic table and when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. After washing their feet, Jesus tells the apostles, “a new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you.” And in the Eucharistic table, Jesus tells them, “take this all of you and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood which will be poured out for the forgiveness of sins.” I think we can find here an answer how to love ourselves, as well as our neighbours, because this brings us to Cross. On the Cross, Jesus showed us the great expression of his love for us: “Knowing that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father, He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” It is a love that forgives. It is a love that gives. So, when we look at ourselves, let us be reminded of that spiritual memory of ourselves, of how Christ looks at us from the cross. With that same look, with that same love, we are called to love the other people as well. In this love, we are glorifying the Father for when we love the others, we participate in the same love of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

 I hope you have a great Sunday and may “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” remain always in your heart and in your homes. God bless you all!

In Christ,

Nelson Villamor, SCV