Category: Catholic Issues

http://www.usccb.org/nab/102305.htm

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“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 the 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.”

First of all, I’m sorry this reflection is late. I know some of you check this blog out frequently for lectionary reflections, and I appreciate that … you’ve been keeping me honest! So with that in mind, and my sincere apologies, let’s look at last Sunday’s scriptures.

Jesus quotes with all of the ease of being a good Jew the greatest commandments. He has been taught them from his youth, as all Jewish children would have been. (We’ll just let go for now the special knowledge he may have of these based on his divinity…) But the important part is his last sentence: The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. With all the skill of a good rabbi, Jesus sums up the scriptures in one call to action: love of God and love of neighbor.

It’s simple. As we dedicate ourselves to God and one another, we fulfill everything the law and prophets always tried to do. The Gospel, though, gives us the mechanism to really do it: freedom. God always meant for us to be truly free, and that freedom does not equal “license” or lawlessness. It does not equal doing whatever we want or expressing any thought that crosses our minds: our freedom cannot trample the rights and freedoms of others, or we have lost sight of the goal of the greatest commandments.

True freedom is ridding ourselves of the attachments that keep us from loving God and neighbor fully. Everything that holds us back and drags us down must be cut away mercilessly or we cannot love God and neighbor freely. And ironically, when we do not love God and neighbor freely, we are never really free.

The hard part is cutting away the attachments: the relationships that are not healthy; the entertainments that do not edify; the concern for self that does not let us reach out to others; the desire for success that manifests itself in greed. The list can get long, and it can be hard to identify those attachments in our lives. But the Psalmist today gives us the criteria:

I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

Whatever takes our eyes off this truth, this praise, this love of God who is our Savior, that must be cut away. Mercilessly.

This is painful, yes. But the payoff is great: true freedom.

http://www.usccb.org/nab/101605.htm

At that he said to them,
“Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God.”

I think this statement begs the question, “What doesn’t belong to God?” I think I’ve often missed this irony on Jesus’ part.

After all, Jesus certainly wasn’t preaching that we should compartmentalize our lives: every part of our lives belongs to God, and we owe it all back to Him. Every moment of our time, every earthly treasure we may own, all of our talents and gifts, our health and well-being, our very breath … all of this belongs to God. And all of it has been given to us as a great trust.

We are stewards of all that we are and all that we have. We need to get it right, and to live every moment as though we were borrowing these great treasures from our generous and giving God.

The thought occurs to me that these words may seem empty to those who have comparatively little. Those who don’t have great health, or great wealth. The unemployed and those with financial troubles. The aged and lonely. So many have what seems to be great poverty. Yet many of those who might be considered very poor can teach the rest of us how to get it right. So many who have comparatively little give what little they have, knowing it belongs to God.

Because with God it doesn’t matter whether we’re wealthy or not, healthy or sick: what matters is that we use what we have for God’s purposes and that we sing with the Psalmist:

Give to the LORD, you families of nations,
give to the LORD glory and praise;
give to the LORD the glory due his name!

http://www.usccb.org/nab/091105.htm

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”

What an interesting reading to have had on September 11th. I think it’s so hard for us to even forgive the little things that happen in our personal lives. So then to be expected to forgive something as greivous as terrorist attacks on our country is really grasping for the impossible, it would seem.

The Church didn’t pull any dirty tricks putting this reading out there for Sunday. That’s what’s in the Lectionary for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, cycle A. It just so happens that corresponded to September 11th this year. But still in all, I don’t believe in coincidence; I believe in the work of the Holy Spirit who is clearly speaking, yelling to us in these readings!

Forgiveness was the major theme of Jesus’ ministry and mission, and so it has to be ours too. We must forgive each other from our hearts for the small and petty, and even for the ghastly and unconscionable. Have I done this yet? I’d have to say no. But the solution isn’t to abandon the pursuit of it as pie-in-the-sky. The solution is to take up the cross and forgive.

For truly “The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion,” as the psalmist says. And we are expected to do likewise, lest we suffer the fate of the unforgiving servant in the Gospel reading. We, like him, are expected to forgive our brothers and sisters from our hearts.