30th Sunday of Year A; 29th October, 2023

 
“If in our love for neighbor we eliminate love for God, our passion becomes fire, a violent and devastating passion, a selfish and possessive pretension that ends up devouring the other and consuming every neighborhood…”

Therefore, in this holy Mass, we humbly implore God who is love to give us grace for true love of him and of our neighbor. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Exodus 22,20-26; Psalm l7 (18); 1 Thessalonians 1.5c-10; Matthew 22,34-40, 30th Sunday of Year A; 29th October, 2023)

When asked by the doctor of the Law about the great commandment, Jesus replies by quoting a text from Deuteronomy to which he adds a verse from Leviticus. However, Matthew drops an important verb, with which the passage from Deuteronomy opens: “Listen!” (see Deut. 6,4). And in Deuteronomy, “listen” is associated with another fundamental verb: “remember”. We listen to be able to remember, and remember not simply a story, but all that God has done for his people. What we have to listen to is not primarily a commandment – “You must love!” -, but in addition, the fact that God loved us first, and that this love of his has been translated for us into the history of salvation, into the promise of life, into an overabundant blessing. We must listen to the reality that we have been loved and that in his love, God has given us everything. It is this totality of the gift that establishes our possibility of responding to him, loving him with all that we are.

However, this total love for God has love for one’s neighbor as a condition: you will love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, John will explain in his first letter, that we cannot love God whom we do not see except by loving the brother we see (cf. 1 John 4,20). However, there is something else here other than to listen to and understand. It is that we can understand what Leviticus intends to convey by the injunction: “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself”. You must recognize the love with which God has loved and saved you and in the same measure of love with which he loves and saves you, you must love your brother or sister who lives next to you. The bond that binds you to them is what God has done for you, just as he did for them. Paul will clearly state that the brother is someone for whom Jesus died, just as he died for you (cf. 1 Cor 8,11). Then, it goes to say that the work of salvation that you recognize in your life you must contemplate it in the life of the neighbor who lives next to you; whoever he is, whatever he has done in his life. He is loved and saved by the Lord in the same way the Lord loves and saves you. Here is all the beauty of the Church, of every Christian community, of every family. If I cannot love God that I do not see without loving the brother I see, neither can I recognize the love God has for me without recognizing the love he has for my brother or sister. Therefore, at the heart of every commandment there is love, just as at the heart of love there is a commandment, there is the word of God. Love is not only a spontaneous movement of the heart; it is also founded on a Word, it is an outcome of listening. This dynamic is as true in one’s personal life as it is in the life of a community. Paul reminds the Christians of Thessalonica that at the origin of their community there is a word of God preached with the example of life and welcomed, albeit in the midst of many trials and tribulations, in the joy of the Holy Spirit. What is true for the community of Thessalonica remains true for every Christian community: at the beginning of our common life there is the word of God, preached in faith and welcomed in joy. Listening means recognizing that the word of God works among us and slowly fulfills his promises. Before being a commandment, the word of God is in fact a promise: a promise of life, a promise of a fruitfulness that overcomes our impossibilities. Indeed, the great commandment says: “You shall love”. If you listen to the word of God and let it operate in your life, then what the word commands becomes a promise: “you will love” becomes: “you will be able to love”; and the word that you have heard, and in which you have believed, will mature unto the fulfillment of love, in your personal existence and in that of your community or your family. In this listening we discover that our relationships always know a three-way dynamism, a sort of triangulation, in this case virtuous: God - the other - myself. As previously mentioned, when I relate to others, there is God in the midst, the God of the Covenant. When I seek God, between me and him, I always meet the other. When I eliminate one of these poles I inevitably fall into the inability to love.

The first proximity in the Bible is that between Adam and Eve, between man and woman, between ish and issha, according to two very similar Hebrew terms. Jewish tradition, which enjoys playing skillfully with the letters of the alphabet, affirms that in ish (man) there is the letter yod, which is the first letter of the holy and unpronounceable name of God, the Tetragrammaton revealed to Moses at the bush (see Exodus 3,14). In issha (woman) the letters in the Hebrew name of God are two, because besides the letter yod there is also the letter he. There is the name of God, therefore, both in the name “man” and in the name “woman”. If you remove the letter yod from ish, and also the he from issha, the two remaining letters become esh, which designates fire, but a fire that destroys everything, annihilating any possible relationship. If in our love for neighbor we eliminate love for God, our passion becomes fire, a violent and devastating passion, a selfish and possessive pretension that ends up devouring the other and consuming every neighborhood, not even the smallest sign must fall from the Law, Jesus affirms (cf. Matt 5,18), not even one iota or one yod; but the real yod that must never fall is that of the holy name of God. +John I. Okoye.

(graphic  by Charles)