BIBLE STUDY #60
THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
October 23, 2011

READING 1: EX 22:20-26

Thus says the LORD:
"You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry.
My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword;
then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.

"If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people,
you shall not act like an extortioner toward him
by demanding interest from him.
If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge,
you shall return it to him before sunset;
for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.
What else has he to sleep in?
If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."

The Word of the Lord

READING 2: 1 THES 1:5C-10

Brothers and sisters:
You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord,
receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit,
so that you became a model for all the believers
in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth
not only in Macedonia and in Achaia,
but in every place your faith in God has gone forth,
so that we have no need to say anything.
For they themselves openly declare about us
what sort of reception we had among you,
and how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.

The Word of the Lord
GOSPEL: MT 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"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."

The Gospel of the Lord

Reflection

Today’s Gospel is known as “The Great Commandment”. The first part about loving God comes from Deuteronomy 6:5 (Jews would say this as part of their great prayer known as the Shema) and the second part about loving others is from Leviticus 19:18. So we see that these are not new commandments. Jesus puts them together and puts loving others on the same level as loving God. And we will see in the parable of the Good Samaritan that the definition of neighbor is expanded from fellow Israelites to everybody.

Having the great commandment does not negate any other laws, but puts them into perspective. Laws are something that define us, give us direction, and help us to gain an end. Law is not an end in itself. Law should direct us and support us in our quest to imitate God by loving God and each other. In other words, it’s not enough to follow the Law: we must be loving people. To paraphrase St. Paul in 1Corinthians, regardless of what we do, if we don’t love, then we are missing the point.

It is also a good way to remember what we are about – God is love, as it says in 1 John, and we should be about love also. If anyone asks what our faith is all about, tell them it is to love God and each other. It’s hard to remember all the different laws, anyway. At one point, some rabbis counted 613 commandments in the Torah (the first 5 books of the bible) – 248 positive (“you shall”) and 365 negative (“you shall not”). To put that into perspective, the Code of Canon Law in the Catholic Church has 1,752 canons (laws) and many of them are broken down into 2 or more sections. The Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1994 has 2,865 paragraphs in 688 pages trying to define who we are as Catholics (that’s not even counting the 115 pages of appendices). How are we supposed to remember all that?

It seems to me that the Code of Canon Law and the Catechism are both specific descriptions of how we are to love. If we concentrate on building our relationship with God through prayer and sacraments, and serving each other like Jesus did, we will be following God as best we can. We can always refer to the Code and to the Catechism when we have specific questions on how we are to love.

To me, loving God means to spend time with God in prayer and sacraments. How else are we to build a relationship with God? When we want to develop a relationship with another human being, we spend time together, talk, and do things together. After awhile we have a bond with that other person that no one or nothing can break. That’s exactly how we build our relationship with God. We will develop that bond with God that will never be broken.

I think it is interesting that this commandment says not just to love others, but to love them as you love yourself. We all want to be forgiven, we all want others to treat us with love, respect and dignity, and we all want to be helped in time of need. If we want these things for ourselves, we must offer them to others; that is how this commandment defines loving each other.

Both the first and second reading tell us a little about loving each other. The first reading is picked to have a similar theme to the Gospel, but it is only a coincidence when the second readings’ theme matches the Gospel. Normally, a New Testament book is selected and we hear passages from that book for some weeks. We started with 1 Thessalonians on the 29th Sunday in Ordinary time and will continue this book until the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Aliens, widows, and orphans coming to a foreign land were very susceptible to mistreatment. Many people came to escape war and famine, or some other hardship, and many times had no one to protect them. The book of Exodus tells the people that if they wrong one of these vulnerable people, they will be in trouble with God and will be punished. They are reminded of God’s love, compassion, and mercy to them when he freed them from the land of Egypt, and were required to treat others the same way.

It was against the law to exact interest from a fellow Israelite, so lenders expected to receive a pledge from the borrower; if it was a cloak, they had to return it before sunset because the borrower would need it. We are told to be compassionate as God is compassionate.

In the second reading, we see that the people of Thessalonika had taken to heart the message of the gospel as preached by Paul and his companions, and they began to enthusiastically spread the Good News to surrounding towns with some success. They were great examples in word and deed to others. Are we great examples? Do we do anything to spread our faith?

Fr. Phil