Each day we have to decide whether to be a Good Samaritan or indifferent bystanders when we come upon the needy and the hurting of our community. (Pope Francis)

 

Thirtieth Sunday in OT A  2020

 

One of the Pharisees, a scholar of the law, tested Jesus by asking: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”     As in last week’s Gospel in asking Jesus: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not,” the Pharisees seek to engage Jesus in debate and to win the argument.  Good luck with that.

Jesus responded: “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  The second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

These two commandments are the currency of God’s kingdom, a currency completely different from last week’s Roman coin and completely different from the self-centered transactions that too often characterize our contemporary way of life.  Being indifferent to or hating others is to deny the existence of God’s presence in one’s neighbor.

Jesus’ answer was not a particular law, now even two particular laws.  His answered demanded a new lifestyle, a way of living that draws us so close to God that we become His presence for others.  The law tells us what we have done wrong.  Love tells who we can be.  While this linking of the two great commandments was not unique to Jesus, it does get at the heart of Jesus’ mission and ministry.

Jesus is not attempting to do away with the law and the prophets by reducing everything to the so-called new commandment.  This commandment becomes the lens through which everything is to be seen.  It is the interpretative key for understanding all of revelation. 

 The love command is the guts of Catholic morality.  Church practices and rules are there to help us avoid everything that is opposed to the “love command.”  Sin in our lives is when we do not live up to our baptismal commitment, to our discipleship witness of loving God and our neighbor.  In the Gospel account, the Pharisees understanding of what truth is could be found only in a multitude of laws.  The Gospel affirms the witness of a God of love and a God of hope.  The joy of the Gospel is discovered when we share the merciful love of Jesus with one another.

Meaningful discipleship is not found in the mere observance of law.  Meaningful religion is lived out in a triangle of love – love for God, love for others, and love for self.  In that triangle of love is found the secret of a fulfilling life on earth and a foretaste of the life to come.

If you ask yourself, what does God want of us, what is God’s priority for us?  God’s priority for us is that we love our neighbor as our self.   For Jesus, our neighbor is anyone and everyone, unconditionally, no exceptions.  To say again, for Jesus, our neighbor is anyone and everyone, unconditionally, no exceptions.

I recommend for your reading and prayer Pope Francis’ most recent encyclical FRATELLI TUTTI.  Pope Francis invites to pray over the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Pope Francis challenges us with the meditation that each day we have to decide whether to be a Good Samaritan or indifferent bystanders as we come upon the needy and the hurting people of our community.  The Pope asks: “Will we bend down and to touch and heal the wounds of others?”

Our intimacy with the Lord will be based on the love and intimacy we have shared with all of God’s people.  The first Scripture reading from the book of Exodus concretizes Jesus’ teaching.  The alien, the orphan and the poor are our neighbors.

  Immigrants whether documented or undocumented, saints or sinners, every member of LGBT, your family member whom it is most difficult for you to relate to is your neighbor to be loved and is the barometer of the depth of our love of God.

May the next rosary we pray be for those it is difficult for us to understand and for those it is difficult to love.

In a family or in a religious community or in a parish community, it is not easy to love those who reject the way of life of the family, of the religious community or of the parish.  Loving these people does not mean rejecting the way of life handed down by the Lord.  It does mean seeking ways to love those who reject it.   This is part of the ongoing challenge of following Jesus Christ

May we be transformed by God’s grace, who desires us to care for all among us who are in need, not just because particular laws govern us but because the love of God and neighbor burns in us.

We pray today that we might love God so deeply that we will have no choice but to bring God’s love to those around us.

This is not to say all of us are ready to be canonized because we have already mastered the commandment of love, but may it be the desire of our hearts to make love the first requirement of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus.

The poet Maya Angelou was once asked what her lifetime goals were.  She answered that she wanted to become a Christian.  Now Maya Angelou was already a Christian.    Her point was that Christianity is an ongoing process of becoming.    Everyday we take steps to become a Christian.

In all humility, may all of us identify with the lifetime goal of Maya Angelou and strive always to become more Christian, to live the first requirement of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus – our love of God and our love of one another.

With each Eucharist we celebrate, in the Penitential Rite we acknowledge the areas of our life in which Jesus is not yet Lord, the ways that we have not loved God and our neighbor.  Thankfully and gratefully we are the recipients of the merciful love of Jesus, and we commit ourselves to be people who love one another.

And so, we pray, Lord, let love be the guiding principle of all I say and think.   For our life as a disciple of Jesus requires that we treat all –especially the most vulnerable – with dignity.  Again, being indifferent to or hating others is to deny the existence of God’s presence in one’s neighbor

Have a Blessed day.

The human heart is stamped with the image of God.

 

TWENTY NINTH SUNDAY IN OT A 2020

In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech.  Their strategy was to get Jesus to talk about taxes.  That usually is a no-win situation. Taxes are a timeless human issue.  So, they said to Jesus: “Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar or not?”

In replying to those who were trying to trap him, Jesus said: “Show me the coin that pays the census tax.”   Looking at the coin, Jesus then asks: “whose image is this and whose inscription?’  They replied, “Caesar’s.”  It is lawful to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.  By answering, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” Jesus narrows his response to the need to pay the census tax.  The payment of taxes helps fulfills the government’s responsibility to provide for the common good.  We need to be the servants not only of our personal interests but also of the societal needs.

The point of the story is to see how Jesus responds to this attempt to entrap him.  Jesus turned the question about taxes into a much more important question:  How are we to relate to God?

The second half of Jesus response: “Give to God what belongs to God.”  This is comprehensive statement and includes all areas of life.  There is one crucial question for us to reflect upon that is not asked in the Gospel conversation.  If Caesar’s image is on the coin, where do we find God’s image?  For we are to give to God that which bears the image of God.

As of last Wednesday, I just completed my annual eight day silent, directed retreat at a Jesuit retreat house in Gloucester, MA. I prayed using the words and the prayer of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits:  “Take, Lord, and receive my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will – all that I have and all that I call my own.”

The prayer of St. Ignatius is the prayer that Jesus is asking of us in today’s Gospel.  Give to God what belongs to God.  Jesus is asking of us – where do we belong?

On the one hand, belonging can sound like we are being controlled, or our money belongs to us and we can do what we like with it.  But for Jesus, it’s the belonging of love, not of power and control.

The truth of our lives is much is not in our control. We are born and die in God’s time. This reminds us that we are not the masters of our lives, we come from God and go to God. This belonging is the center of our human family and community. God doesn’t want to control us but to love us.

But there’s an addition: belonging to God means belonging to each other. This means we have rights and duties of love: To give to oth­ers what belongs to others; give to the poor what belongs to the poor. To give to God what belongs to God is to share the goods of the earth!

Following the wisdom of St. Ignatius, the grace that I sought in my retreat is to have the spiritual sightedness to find God in all things.  We will find God’s image imprinted on all of creation, on each human being and each human work.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.

It is people, ourselves, who are in the image and likeness of God.  We belong to God.  When God is truly the center of our lives, there is no problem with giving others their due. 

When we forget that we are made in God’s image, we can easily attach ourselves to the Caesars of our lives – the stock market, your career, or your favorite political party. We may want to grasp Caesar’s false coins as our security and our destiny.  But we need to ask ourselves, can anything but God be our security and our destiny?  The old adage holds true that nobody laments on their deathbeds that they didn’t make more money or spend more time at work.  Submitting only to Caesar and the pursuit of wealth will not satisfy us. 

Ultimately, we belong to God and the service and love of God’s people is the source of meaning and happiness in our lives.   Moreover, all of God’s creation bears the image of God.   Our care for our environment, our stewardship of the earth is giving back to God what belongs to God.

Even though none of us enjoy paying taxes, in the big picture, giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s is not the demanding component of today’s Gospel.   Where we are challenged is:  Giving to God what is God’s.

God does not want taxes. He does not need your vote and He does not need you to take up arms in His defense.  But God does deserve your heart and conscience. These should never be given to a human institution or even to a human relationship. Your greatest love, your greatest loyalty belongs to God.

The Roman coin was stamped with the image of Caesar.  The human heart is stamped with the image of God. We are made in His image and likeness.  Perhaps, the question is, “Shall we, can we, and do we give to God what is God’s?”

An old Indian was sharing his wisdom with this grandson.  He told the grandson that we have two wolves inside us who struggle with each other. One is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other is the wolf of fear, greed and hatred. “Which wolf will win, grandfather?”, asked the grandson. The wise old Indian said, “Whichever one you feed and whichever one you encourage.”

Yes, we all have within us the demons, the wolves of greed, control, and self-centeredness.   We all get stuck on ourselves and what we want at times. We can act as if everything belongs to ourselves.  Yes, we can feed that side of our selves with our greed and our need to be the center of the universe.

It is when we realize that we and all creation belong to God, that we are made in his image and likeness, that we are made to love and serve others, that we are to give thanks to the Lord our God, then we feed and encourage the wolf of love, the better angels within us.

This weekend, we are asking your support of the Catholic Ministries Appeal.  In supporting the CMA, we are feeding and encouraging a spirit of generosity within us.

The CMA supports the ministries of our diocese – some of them directly benefit our parish, and some of these ministries directly benefit people in the diocese who have considerably less resources than ourselves.  In both cases and in all cases, we are called to a Gospel spirit of stewardship in which we share what we have with others.  All who are served by the CMA are made in the image and likeness of God.

When we give generously from our giftedness to help and serve, we indeed are giving to God what belongs to God.  We are the stewards of the abundance of God’s love what we share generously what we have been given. 

Lord may your will that we share well the goods of the world be done.

Have a Blessed Day.