Sunday, October 26, 2014
30th Sunday
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading:
Exodus 22:20-26
2nd Reading: 1st Thessalonians 1:5-10
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 because experience tells us that we do not always have to love God in order to love our neighbors. Equating love of God with love of neighbor may likewise be improper because we know of many people who love God but hate their neighbors. With the foregoing considerations 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 such that whoever experiences our love also feels 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 arrive at this similarity? At the start God had already bestowed will power upon us to empower us to swim against the tide of human weakness and love others the way God wants. Ascetics of the past built their spirituality upon this principle of swimming against the tide. By saying no even to things that are not sinful in themselves they built their will power to the effect that 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. — Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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