Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 25, 2020
(Exodus 22:20-26; I Thessalonians 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40)
(There is a saying: "All roads lead to Rome." You
can change the saying for the four gospels. "All roads lead to
Jerusalem." The purpose of the gospels is to show how Jesus dies in
Jerusalem to redeem man from sin. For the past four Sundays we have found Jesus
in Jerusalem debating with the Jewish leaders. First, he had to explain to the
high priests why he had overturned the tables in the temple. So last Sunday he
proved more cunning than the Pharisees who wanted to trip him up with the
question about the tribute to Caesar. Now Jesus answers another leading
question.
A doctor of the law approaches Jesus asking which
commandment is the greatest. There are 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law. They
are all considered important. Is the greatest the first one written in Genesis,
"Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it"? Or perhaps it
is the first in the Decalogue: "You will have no other gods apart from
me." Still, Jesus doesn't seem discouraged by being tested with such a
knotty question. On the contrary, as a bright young man he seems eager to
manifest his understanding.
Jesus answers the question more with wisdom than mere knowledge.
There is no elder authority that forms the first commandment in the same way as
it. Perhaps Socrates would say, "The greatest commandment is 'Know
yourself.' Machiavelli, the famous political philosopher of the Renaissance,
perhaps would propose: "Be strong so that everyone respects you." But
Jesus, whose human will always conforms to the divine will, does something
wonderfully original. Because of his Jewish ancestry, he says that you have to
love God above all else. But immediately he adds, as if there were not the
first without the second, you have to love your neighbor. Like horse and
carriage, it is not possible to love God if we do not love other human persons.
But what is love that Jesus refers to? It's certainly not
the taste of tourists wearing T-shirts: "I love New York." Nor is it
sexual gratification as contemporary songs would have. No, the love that Jesus
has in mind is the sacrifice of the self for the good of the other. It is the
love that Saint Paul wrote to the Romans: "God showed us his love in that,
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
You can see this love in the lives of the saints. Saint
Teresa of the Child Jesus wanted to go to the missionary lands and die as a
martyr. But she was not only a nun in a convent but also sick and weak. Then
she realized that she could fulfill her desire to be martyred by deepening in
love. She devoted herself more and more to prayer and the good of her
companions in the convent. Likewise, it is said of San Martín de Porres that
she spent the nights in prayer and penance and the days showing the goodness of
God in full force. One day when he returned to his convent, Martín found a
bleeding man lying in the street, the victim of a murderer's dagger. Martín
bandaged the wound as much as possible and rushed her to her convent to save
her life. There he had to put him in his own bed because the superior of the
convent forbade him to shelter the sick in the convent. When the superior found
out, he demanded an explanation from Martín. The humble brother said he did not
think that the precept of obedience exceeded that of charity.
"He who loves a lot, long ago" is a simple saying.
It is rooted in the gospel and also in the lives of the saints. This type of
love surpasses the dissimulations found in songs and in T-shirts. Those who
follow him fulfill the first commandments of Jesus: "Love God first, then
your neighbor."
