Sunday, October 29, 2017 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Exodus 22:20-26 2nd Reading: 1st Thessalonians 1:5c-10 Gospel: Matthew 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)
Jesus described love of neighbor as one “very similar” to love of God. Qualifying the word “similar” with “very” still leaves unsettled the exact level of correspondence between love of God and love of neighbor. Is it 90% similar? Why didn’t he simply say both are the same?
Equating love of neighbor with love of God may not be proper. Experience tells us that not all who love the neighbors love God. Likewise, not all those who love God love the neighbor. We should just stick to the words “very similar”.
When one is very similar to another, that similarity imposes upon the minds of observers the presence of that other. Love of neighbor should be “very similar” to love of God because we are supposed to love others in a manner very similar to how we love God. In other words our love towards our neighbors should approximate our level of love towards God. Thus, whoever experiences our love should also feel the love of God. Jesus was more explicit when he said that whatever we do to the least of our brothers we do unto him.
Is it possible for human beings like us to honor this similarity? By our gifts of will and intellect yes we can. Intelligence enables us to stop looking for reasons to love others because we already understand that the only reason to do so is the fact that it is how God wants himself loved. By our will power we can swim against the tide of human weakness and love others the way God wants us to love them.
Ascetics of the past built their spirituality upon this principle of swimming against the tide. Their slogan is “agere contra!” By saying no even to things that are not sinful in themselves they built their will power. In effect they became strong enough to say no to greater temptations. By building up our will power and by the grace which God so willingly bestows upon those who ask we can make our love of neighbor very similar to our love for God. –(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM.
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