Homily: 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Friends, it’s true that we know that
someone loves us because of what they do as much as by what they say. For example, we know that grandma loves us,
not just because she says so, but because of her incessant hugs and kisses,
because she bakes us cookies, because she takes care of us when mom and dad are
away, because she gives us fun and thoughtful gifts for birthdays and for
Christmas, and because she celebrates all of the special occasions in life with
us. In other words, we know she loves us
because she not only tells us that she loves us, but because she demonstrates
her love in actions; and we know that it is in these actions that the love that
she professes is, in a sense, authenticated.
We also know that someone loves us
when they, too, come to love the things that we love, right? For example, perhaps you’re not a baseball
fan, but you become a fan of your spouse’s favorite team; or, you learn to love
reading books so that you can share the experience of reading a good book with
your best friend; or, you open yourself to liking your significant other’s dog
or cat (even if you aren’t a “dog” or “cat” person) so that your significant
other doesn’t feel divided between the two.
In this case, we demonstrate love for the person by going beyond words and
by demonstrating love for the things that our beloved loves.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus is
challenged to declare his opinion about the “greatest commandment”. The Pharisees were thinking of the 613
precepts of the Jewish law and were hoping to expose him as a fraud if he
tripped up and picked a less important precept as the greatest. Jesus answers, however, with the obvious:
that the greatest commandment is the most important thing that we could
possibly do in life: that is, to love God (the Almighty) with your whole being. (I say that this was obvious, because his
answer comes straight from the shema, the fundamental prayer of the
Jewish people, which they prayed at morning, noon, and night and which is
recorded for us in the sixth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. It says, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our
God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with your
whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.”) Notice, Jesus rightly emphasizes with your whole being. In other words, he says, don't just say that
you love God, but rather put your whole life towards demonstrating it (just like
grandma demonstrates her love by the loving actions she performs for you). This, Jesus replies, is the greatest
commandment.
Then Jesus adds to his response:
stating that the second greatest commandment comes in the form of the second
sense of demonstrating love (that is, loving the things that our beloved loves). Here’s what I mean: In the first reading we
heard how God declared his love for all people, especially for the poor and
destitute: saying that the alien, widow, and orphan who cried out to him would
be especially heard by him. These the Scriptures
call the anawim: the “poor and lowly ones” who suffer seemingly through
no fault of their own. These God takes
into special account because they have no worldly recourse. Thus, he accounts it as a great offense to
him if those who claim to love him ignore them and leave them to suffer.
Can we just pause for a moment and look at the very
specific tenderness that God has for the anawim? Let’s listen again to the last part of that
reading: “If you
take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him
before sunset; for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his
body. What else has he to sleep in?” God is worried about one of the poor having
warm pajamas to sleep in! The point of
the instruction is to say, “the man has given you his cloak (a valuable article
of clothing, it seems) as a pledge to pay back what he owes you. Do not cling to his cloak as if you don’t
believe that he will pay you back. If he
needs it while he still owes you, allow him to take it back.” God’s concern, however, is equally for the
lender to be compassionate as it is for the borrower not to be cold at
night! His care and concern for the anawim
is a deeply personal one. And so, when we love our neighbor, especially
those most in need among us, by serving their needs in the most personal way
that we can, we demonstrate our love for that which God loves; and, in
doing so, we demonstrate our love for God, once again.
From this, we can come to a right
understanding of stewardship.
Stewardship, my brothers and sisters, is not a burden of guilt that the
Church imposes on us. Rather, it is a
response: it is a response of gratitude from one who acknowledges the
undeserved gifts he/she has received from God.
It is a response of love from one who acknowledges that he/she was,
indeed, first loved by God. Stewardship,
therefore, is “loving God back”. By
giving of ourselves in worship, prayer, and study, and by serving his Church,
we demonstrate our gratitude, and,
thus, our love, to God. By serving those
less-fortunate than us, we emphasize
our love by loving those whom God loves.
Our Holy Father, Pope Francis’ latest
encyclical Fratelli Tutti (“All Brothers”) emphasizes this point, especially
in the chapter when he discusses the parable of the Good Samaritan. Often, I’ll say that the lesson that the
parable gives us is that we must recognize our neighbor as “the one near us who
is in need of mercy”. Pope Francis takes
it one step further saying that the Samaritan did more than that: he didn’t
just recognize this person in need of mercy and decide to help him as if he
was his neighbor; rather, he made him his neighbor—that is, he chose
this man to be his neighbor—thus making it natural for him to treat him as he
did.
Dr. Martin Luther King
famously explained the parable of the Good Samaritan in this way: he said that
the failure of the priest and the Levite was that they encountered the man in
need and focused on this question: “what will happen to me if I stop and
help him?” The Samaritan, however, saw
the man and instead asked this question: “what will happen to him if I do
not help him?” The priest and Levite were
worried about the purity laws and placed them higher than the “greatest law”,
as Jesus presented it. The Samaritan, on
the other hand, responded to the greatest law first, knowing that any lesser
laws were subject to it. The priest and
Levite failed in love of God, because they thought love of God would be
fulfilled by strict adherence to the precepts of the law. The Samaritan, however, fulfilled love,
because he obeyed the law that undergirds all of the law’s precepts when he did
for the man exactly what he would have done for himself had he fell victim to the
robbers. Obeying the law of love freed
the Samaritan to respond.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ll feel like this is
hard to do in real life. My guess is
that each of us much more readily identifies with the priest and the Levite
than we do with the Samaritan. Well, this
is why love of God must be first. When
we love God—that is, when we give ourselves over completely to Him, who is love—we
come to realize just how compassionate He has been to us; and we realize, too,
that compassion is the one thing that we have lacked the most. Thus we are inspired to have compassion for
others; and we begin to realize that this kind of love actually frees us,
because it moves us to respond to those good desires in our hearts to offer
ourselves for the good of others (however foolish it may seem at the time). Thus, we no longer say, “I won’t help him,
because of what might happen to me”, but rather, “I will help, because it is
what God would will for him, and it is what I would will for myself, and this
person deserves nothing less.”
My brothers and sisters: love God, and meditate on His
love, that is, His compassion for us, his anawim, and you will find the
freedom, that is, the inspiration, to have compassion for everyone around you
that you find in need. And when you do,
then harmony will begin to return to our community, our nation, and the world;
and the law of love, that is, the law of freedom that we find in Christ Jesus,
will make us truly free.
Given
at Saint Joan of Arc Parish: Kokomo, IN – October 25th, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment