I’m late in posting. Sorry! It is worth the read! Deacon Bob’s Homily 30th Sunday, Cycle A (October 29th).

In the gospel today (Matt. 22: 34-40), we have a scholar of the law test Jesus. Jesus has been doing a lot of teaching, he gave the sermon on the mount where he said– you have heard that it was said, but I say to you. So, this scholar asks Jesus, which is the greatest commandment. Realize that in the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible which were considered “the law” there wasn’t just the 10 commandments, there were 613 laws that the Jews followed, and this guy is a scholar of those 613 laws.

Jesus responds with the law that is by far the most well-known law to Jews, the Shema. There’s more to the Shema, but this is where it says – love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. I saw how important this is for Jewish people first-hand when I was dating Joni and I would go to her home and on the inside of the door jamb, there was this tiny little rectangular box stuck there. I found out that’s a mezuzah and it contains 2 tiny scrolls: one with the 10 commandments and the other with the Shema. It was the practice of ancient Jews to pray this prayer 3 times a day, morning, noon, and night. It’s like the Our Father for Christians, and in fact going all the way back to the Didache in the first century, we see it was the practice for Christians to say the Our Father 3 times a day in imitation of the Jews. So, the Shema was very well known, and it basically says, love God totally, with everything you got.

Then He gives the 2^nd commandment – love your neighbor as yourself. This comes from the book of Leviticus which is part of the Torah so this scholar would have been familiar with it. Then Jesus says the whole law and the prophets depend on these 2. Basically, He has summed up all the commandments with these 2.

Take for example the 10 commandments. They were written on 2 tablets; the first tablet has the first 3 commandments which address God; the second tablet has the next 7 commandments, and they address our neighbor. Both summed up in these 2 commandments, but they go beyond just a summary. Virtually all the 10 commandments are negative prohibitions – that shalt not, that shalt not… The 2 great commandments are positive. Love. Love is not simply avoiding the negative, it’s doing the positive. As a catechist friend of mine used to say, love is a verb, love is what you do.

Now I want to go a little deeper and ask what does that mean – to love God with everything and love your neighbor as yourself. What does that look like?

I’m going to start with a person who for me exemplified this better than anyone I know and that is Pope St. John Paul II. First of all, he really loved people, he really cared deeply about people. I remember just one incident when he visited Nicaragua and they had a large outdoor Mass planned but the government decided that all the seats near the front would go to the VIPs and the military and the regular people, the poor people, would all be way in the back. During the Mass JP II grabbed the processional cross and lifted it high in the air and began to wave it back and forth, and everyone understood what he was doing. He was connecting with the poor people in the back, he was saying I’m here for you, I love you. And there are countless examples like that where he showed he really loved people, especially the poor and the oppressed.

At the same time, he really loved God and believed that everything God revealed to us was good! He was a very strong defender of the Church’s moral teaching because he really believed it was from God and it was good. The most loving thing a person could do is hand on what God revealed and help people follow it. He really believed that. And I don’t know of anyone else who was so perfectly balanced in terms of putting God first, loving God first, and loving people. The horizontal (love of neighbor) was set on the vertical (love of God).

So, how do we do that? We strive for that same balance. We love our neighbor whether that’s our family or our neighbor next store, the person we meet in the grocery store, our co-workers. We choose to care about that person and be for the other. There’s a great book out about Maximillian Kolbe with the title “A Man for Others”. That’s it. We choose to be for others. So, if your spouse is putzing around on something that you think is unimportant while you’re waiting for him or her, choose to accept the inconvenience, not grudgingly but willingly. Now if it gets to be an ongoing problem, then it would be appropriate to say something, but very often it’s just that she isn’t doing what I want when I want. If it’s night and you’re tired and heading for bed and you walk by the sink and see a bunch of dishes, choose to love. That might mean going to your kid and reminding him or her that the dishes need to be done, or maybe your spouse isn’t doing well that evening and so you quietly choose to clean them.

You get the point. There are countless opportunities both inside and outside the home for us to choose to love the other. The key is that we willing choose to do for the other out of love for God – knowing that He sees and He is pleased with every effort we make to love the other. Like He told St. Catherine of Sienna, “I will take every act of love for your neighbor as a sign of your love for me”.

So, we love our neighbor, always in God. Everything rests on God. For example,

Mass every weekend. Of course, if we’re sick, we can stay home; but otherwise, no compromise. If there’s a ballgame, okay, we find a Mass that we can attend. If we’re out of town, okay, Masstimes.org, find a Mass. Never compromise on that. A priest once told me one of the hardest things for him to hear is a child confessing that he missed Mass because his parents didn’t take him.

There are many other areas where we don’t want to compromise. Entertainment – Joni and I decided at one point, no more “R” movies. We weren’t so good in the early days but eventually we decided if we couldn’t invite Jesus and Mary to watch a movie with us, then we weren’t going to offend them for a little entertainment. Being honest and fair with all our financial activities. Keeping the marriage bed undefiled as it says in the letter to the Hebrews, and so on. This is the start. We love God by keeping His commandments. Then beyond that, we do good.

I remember one time Joni’s doctor telling us that his mother’s best years were in her 80’s. It was really funny the way he phrased it. He said his dad died when she was in her late 70’s and her 80’s were the best years of her life. But then he explained that it was because she used her time to volunteer, and she loved it. Not everyone can do this, at least to that extent, but all of us can choose to love the person right in front of us and with God’s grace, we can grow. It can get easier and more natural for us. Growth is possible.

So, brothers and sisters, let us choose the way of love. Let us be men and women for others, always in God. Like JP II, let us firmly believe that God’s revelation is always good. Let us strive for that perfect balance of love of God and love of neighbor. God bless you.