February 20, 2016 Saturday, 1st Week of Lent 1st Reading: Dt 26:16–19 Gospel: Mt 5:43–48
Jesus said to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said: Love your neighbor and do not do good to your enemy. But this I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven. For he makes his sun rise on both the wicked and the good, and he gives rain to both the just and the unjust.“If you love those who love you, what is special about that? Do not even tax collectors do as much? And if you are friendly only to your friends, what is so exceptional about that? Do not even the pagans do as much? For your part you shall be righteous and perfect in the way your heavenly Father is righteous and perfect.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE (Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Under the New Commandment of Love all good works done without love of God and especially of neighbor will rise on God’s weighing scale. There is none in us that we can be boastful about before Him. Yet love takes us to higher levels, high enough to be pleasing to God. When we truly love God by loving our neighbor we sit heavy on God’s weighing scale. This makes Christianity a very difficult religion because loving the neighbor is really onerous to the human heart.
But loving the neighbor has practical advantages, considering that the neighbors we hate on earth could be our roommates in heaven. The problem with harboring hatred towards our neighbor is that our God is a forgiving one. He can admit to heaven even hardened sinners for as long as they repent before death. Thus it is not a remote possibility that these enemies get to heaven even ahead of us. What if we are heaven-bound too? Would heaven still be heaven for us in the company of people who irritate and annoy us?
Thus far is the practical dimension of loving the neighbor. But if we truly feel we belong to God’s family, we do not need any practical reasons to love others. We just love because such is the nature we inherit from our Father. A story is told of a man who tried to save a scorpion from drowning. Of course the scorpion bit him. “Why did you do it when you knew that scorpions bite?” a friend asked. The man replied: “I know that the nature of the scorpion is to bite. But it is also my nature to love.”
The real children of the Father inherit the nature of love because God is love. It is this nature that adds weight to our being and makes us really heavy. When we love the way God loves, we won’t rise on the weighing scale of God.—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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