In today’s Gospel (Matthew 22:34-40) is known as the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”, and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. The majority report sees this passage as Jesus responding to and teaching the religious law experts who did not like what he was teaching. As usual, the minority will be as personal as I let it.
The Alleluia Verse offers a setting to reading the Gospel: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love them and we will come to them.” I “process” a Gospel Story through the filter of what is going on in and around me at the time I hear or read the story. These days there is a lot of nastiness and just plain evil going on – locally, and geopolitically. It is affecting quite a few people. So what does it mean for me to keep Jesus’ word? A good question, and something to think and pray about.
St Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, taught that we “pray” the Gospels by putting ourselves in the various persons in the stories, and do this in the setting of what is going on in our lives at the time, looking to what the Story is saying to me in my life today, and not just something that happened a long time ago. We do this first of all by asking the Spirit to guide us.
For example, in today’s Gospel Story I might put myself in the person of the Pharisee and scholar of the law who “tested him by asking,’Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’”. Why would I want to test Jesus? I am a Pharisee and an expert on temple law. I believe I am right, and Jesus is wrong because he is doing and saying things I don’t like or agree with. If I can trick him or prove him wrong by his own words, I win, and can judge him. It’s all about me, my ego, and my pride. In my own day now, I like to be right, well thought of, and have the answers. I want people to know how good I am. But do I really want to be like the Pharisee? I might put myself in the person of Jesus: I know this Pharisee is trying to trick me. He doesn’t know any better. Pharisees are doing what they are supposed to do — protect their doctrines. I choose to answer him in the same love I am calling him to have. I choose how I respond.
The Great Commandment is about relationships and ongoing transformation. As I look at the relationships in my own life, I have to face the realization that sin is anything that damages my/our wholeness and wellbeing, right relationships with family, other people, creation, etc. It is missing the mark and leads to division rather than solidarity, and makes me think that our differences are more important than what we have in common. It involves refusing to see my part in it all. As I damage the bonds of relationship I help create a broken world. This also includes my relationships with creation. A worthwhile question: am I more interested in keeping myself safe than in recognizing in others whom I fear, don’t understand or like, the same God who is in me? I label people out of a desire for my own comfort and safety. Yet anybody I so label is much more than the labels I give them. People don’t exist to make me comfortable and safe. When I look at Jesus and how he lived and calls me to live, there are no labels. On the contrary, Jesus ignored the labels that the religious system of his day imposed on people the leaders didn’t like. This means Jesus is calling me to do the same. In other words Jesus is calling me to live compassion, to treat others with compassion. How do I do that? Can I pray for the gifts of love and compassion and really mean it, or am I just going through the motions? It’s not at all easy, but it’s something I have to do. I have no idea other than to take his word that he will help me at least to begin moving in this direction: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love them and we will come to them”. Mother Teresa: “Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting ourselves in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts”. In other words, saying “yes” to what is.
Faith is an amazing thing, based on our personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Not believing the “right” things “about” Jesus, but believing “in” Jesus to the extent that I do all I can to be open to Jesus in my life, not always understanding what it all means. It is a matter of trusting Jesus is real and somehow involved in my every situation and relationship, and freely going where this takes me. It’s worth remembering that the Spirit brings us together, while ego drives us apart. Just sayin . . .