Sunday Readings in Brief: 30 A
Exodus 22:20-26; Psalms 17(18); 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Mathew 22:34-40
Why should I love?
Dear friends, today is the 30th Sunday of the Ordinary Time. We have 4 more weeks to end this liturgical year A. Today the readings are reminding us about God’s commandments and why it is wise to keep them as perfectly as we can. According to our Christian faith, God created the universe and human beings not out of necessity but out of LOVE. This is why he created us in his image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27) and breathed his life into us (Gen 2:7), so that we may share in his being. When man and woman believed the lies of the devil and did what God had commanded them not to do, God did not abandon them in anger but rather he found a way to bring them back to himself. This is because LOVE was his driving force. When love is in the driver’s seat, nothing seems impossible to forgive.
Since sin crippled the human will to choose good over evil, God gave us commandments that if we kept them would help us to become righteousness. The Decalogue covers the major aspects of human dignity in relation to God and fellow humans. The first three commandments stipulate how we are supposed to relate to our creator, and the next seven commandments stipulate how we are to treat one another.
Christians understand the character of God through his revelation found in the scriptures and written in the heart of each one as the natural knowledge of good and evil. The Old Testament is a history of a people that God chose among other nations, to carry out the salvation plan of all humankind from self-destruction.
Because of sin, all our cultures just like that of the Jews became tainted with evil and all kinds of corruption and injustices. Just as we read from the Jewish Old Testament, our cultural practices lack equality and equity. In many societies, the rule of the jungle applies where only the rich, the powerful, and the most corrupt thrive while the poor and the weak continue to suffer. In these cultures, traditional practices that are cruel and dehumanizing especially towards women and children continue being practiced. The discriminatory and colonial mentality where some people think that they are naturally superior or have more rights than others continues to fuel animosity in different parts of the world. The neocolonialism and unfair trade policies continue to disadvantage poor countries, especially in the global south. All these may seem good for the villain but not desirable at all for the victims. It all depends on which part of history one is. Most of the time the poor and the widows bear the brunt of it all.
All this happens because we continue to follow our own ways and not God’s ways. One time Jesus rebuked Peter and in fact called him Satan, because he was thinking like man and not like God. All the corruption and injustices we see in the world today are simply the fruits of our applying our human wisdom and ignoring God’s wisdom and commandments. The result is war, misery, injustices, natural disasters, and death. In the first reading today, God reminds us that if we make the poor cry, he will listen to them and come to rescue them. This puts us squarely at the end with God. Many people wonder why, with all the wealth, education, positions, and power they have, peace and happiness keep on evading them. Well, the answer could be that they may be fighting with God in the way they conduct their day-to-day businesses.
Jesus gave us numerous examples of God’s love for his people. Being both God and Man, Jesus was able to use the earthly stories that we all understand, to explain God’s love for us. For example, the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15 show how God goes to great lengths to rescue us from our misery. Today he is reminding us that the greatest of all commandments is LOVE. Love for God and love for those around us.
Science demonstrates that children are born innocent and with innate instincts of love. This tells us that hatred, selfishness, jealousy, and negative competition, among other behaviors that are contrary to the law of love, are things that we are either taught or learn as we grow up. In order to remain in God’s love, we need to, constantly be aware of the imminent risk of evil around us every minute. The line that divides our being righteous and being agents of evil is very thin. This is because evil always comes disguised as righteousness. If we lack spiritual wisdom contained in God’s commandments, then we easily become lured by evil.
Righteousness is not demonstrated by how eloquently we speak about it, but rather by our smallest actions of love towards others no matter who they are. When we allow selfish interests to hijack our motivation, then whatever we do next is corrupt and cannot be construed to be love. On the LOVE of God and Neighbour, the entire law and prophecy is summarized (Mt. 22:40).
We can go to worship every other day, give huge tithes, build praises of worship, and even dedicate our entire lives to serve the ministry, but if we are devoid of LOVE all that is of no value. St. Paul puts it more practically in his song of Love in 1 Cor 13:1-113.
The invitation today my dear friends is to evaluate how we conduct ourselves and see if what motivates us to do what we do is love or selfishness. This will explain to us why our lives are the way they are. If we think that God’s commandments are too heavy a burden to bear, how do we then expect him to lift the burdens of our lives? Keeping God’s commandment is allowing God to help us.
Have a loving Sunday.
Fr. Lawrence Muthee, SVD
SVD JAMBO KENTAN 