Friday, August 21, 2015
20th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Ru 1:1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22
Gospel: Mt 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. One of them, a teacher of the Law, tried to test him with this question, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law?”
Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the most important of the commandments. But after this there is another one very similar to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole Law and the Prophets are founded on these two commandments.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Today’s Gospel strengthens the connection between love for God and love for neighbor. The bond is similar to the umbilical cord that binds mother and infant in the womb. But while in the mother-infant relationship it is the infant that draws nourishment from the mother, love for God and neighbor are mutually dependent. One cannot love God as He wants loved unless that person loves his neighbors.
Similarly, one cannot love his neighbors the right way unless he truly loves God. Despising the neighbor even if the reason is to love God more is not even meritorious. Both must go together.
We are not putting both on equal footing. Love for God still enjoys the primacy. However it is still dependent on love for neighbor as its necessary outlet. Without this outlet love for God is stagnant. As stagnant water poisons people drinking it, so stagnant love for God poisons the soul. Love for God, which does not flow towards others is harmful to spirituality. The toxin generates hypocrisy – a chronic cancer that splits the personality of a person.
Despite this split in personality, however, the hypocrite can still continue loving God. But his cold attitude towards the neighbor will only douse whatever degree of warmth he can muster for God. The net effect is lukewarm faith that is very repulsive to God.
Speaking through the nimble pen of the scribe of the Book of Revelation God said: “You are neither cold nor hot; I wish you were either. But since you are neither, but only lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16). The spitting out is tantamount to cutting off that umbilical cord that binds God and his created beings. Once the link to life’s source is severed, death comes as a matter of course.
Thus, when one fails to love the neighbor, no matter how he strives to love God he still ends up like a walking dead. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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