The most difficult times can produce the greatest spiritual blessings. God truly knows just what we need at every moment!

Friday, October 24, 2014

XXX Sunday in Ordinary Time – A


Ex 22:22-26, 1 Thes 1:5C-10, Mt 22:34-40

"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
And we do know the answer, like the man who asked the question, we know that:

"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 neighbour as yourself."

We know it, at least theoretically.

But, in reality of the daily life … it's a little bit different, more complicated, and not only because we have a problem in loving our difficult and nasty neighbour, but even more … because we don’t know what it means to love. Yes, in reality we do not know ...

Our concept, our notion of love was -and constantly is- shaped by the soapy Hollywood movies and films, by sweet romantic poetry, by emotional excitement and not by the cross.

When St. John says that God is Love it doesn’t mean at all that God is a romantic Lover. When Jesus -in today's Gospel- says that the most important commandment is the obligation to love God and love the neighbour, He is not telling us that we have to be emotionally involved or engaged in affective relationships with God or people. NOT AT ALL!

It is quite easy to love God—He is up there, somewhere in His heaven and doesn’t seem to bother us too much. We can formulate an idea of Him and love that idea. It presents us with few difficulties. But we do love God … yes we do love Him for ourselves, because it is so good to feel it, because it makes me feel so good … But, in reality this is not the LOVE Jesus is talking about.

Much harder is to love not an idea but a person. Much harder is to love a person who fails to meet up with our expectations, one who challenges our assumptions, one whose ugliness is more than skin deep.

But then we have to show that our love is more than skin deep. But we have to show that the love is not emotional, or affective, exciting and romantic … Where do we find this kind of LOVE? Certainly not in Hollywood movies but on Golgotha, in the Passion and death of Christ. This is the deepest and the ultimate LOVE STORY.

A journalist visiting Africa watched an attractive young nun dressing the wounds on a man with gangrene in his leg. The journalist was appalled by the wound but was full of admiration for the young nun who seemed to show no disgust as she was cleaning the suppurating wound. "I wouldn’t do that for £10,000." said the journalist. "Neither would I," said the nun, "I do it for love of God and the true love of man."



Somebody asked me the question:

I realize that the love God provides is not the same as "human love" all the feelings stuff. How do we get to know God's love for us?

What do you think, what should be the answer?

My answer is:

God so loved us that He gave His Only Begotten Son for our salvation.
The biggest expression of God's love for us is the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
There's is no bigger love than to give someone's life for the friends ....
The Holy Spirit given to us in Baptism, is the LOVE OF GOD ...
The next visible sign of God's love is the Eucharist ...
The Church, the Sacraments,
We have to see and recognize this LOVE where it is ... means in God, in Jesus Christ and in the Sacraments ...
God certainly doesn't love us in an emotional, superficial and whimsy way :-).

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