Love changes everything ...!
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ex 22: 20-26; Salm 17; 1 Tess 1:5c-10; Mt 22:34-40
“Love alone matters. Love alone is everything.” These striking words constitute the spiritual testimony which Saint Therese of Lisieux (whose feast was celebrated on the first day of this month) left us. They reveal the very essence of Therese’s vocation: “In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love ... my vocation is love” (“The Story of a Soul”). The theme of love is also central to the Matthean text which the Church proclaims on the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, which text convinces us that loving God and neighbor constitute the core of the Christian life.
“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.” The emphasis in this commandment of love lies on the totality expressed in the word “all” which is reiterated three times in one short phrase. It is interesting to note that the “heart” (in Greek: ‘kardia’) is the first to be mentioned in the list of three things with which we should love God. This is so because, in Scripture, the heart signifies the place from which our decisions emerge.
Perhaps it is not by coincidence that this Gospel episode is to be proclaimed on World Mission Sunday 2005! After spending five weeks with the Maltese Capuchin missionaries in Kenya last Summer, I saw with my own eyes how the missionaries are motivated by a genuine and mature love for Christ, a love which, as Therese puts it, “gives everything”! Yes, the missionaries really give up everything (their native land, their family clan, their people, their comfortable lifestyle, etc.) and like Christ offer themselves as “bread broken for the life of the world” (cf. Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for ‘World Mission Sunday 2005’). I reflected and realized that the missionaries radically put to practice the words which they pronounce at the moment of consecration: “Take and eat, this is my body ... take and drink, this is my blood” as well as Jesus’ affirmation that: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13).
In this year dedicated to the Eucharist, their example helped me to understand better the "eucharistic" sense of the Chrisitan life. Their example of true and mature love (which involves many sacrifices!) I will always carry in my heart and strive to live it out in the concrete situations I find myself in. May the coming World Mission Sunday 2005 encourage us to spiritually assist the missionaries through our prayers and to ardently pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send more missionaries in his harvest for truly: “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few!” (Mt 9:37).
Ex 22: 20-26; Salm 17; 1 Tess 1:5c-10; Mt 22:34-40
“Love alone matters. Love alone is everything.” These striking words constitute the spiritual testimony which Saint Therese of Lisieux (whose feast was celebrated on the first day of this month) left us. They reveal the very essence of Therese’s vocation: “In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love ... my vocation is love” (“The Story of a Soul”). The theme of love is also central to the Matthean text which the Church proclaims on the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, which text convinces us that loving God and neighbor constitute the core of the Christian life.
“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.” The emphasis in this commandment of love lies on the totality expressed in the word “all” which is reiterated three times in one short phrase. It is interesting to note that the “heart” (in Greek: ‘kardia’) is the first to be mentioned in the list of three things with which we should love God. This is so because, in Scripture, the heart signifies the place from which our decisions emerge.
Perhaps it is not by coincidence that this Gospel episode is to be proclaimed on World Mission Sunday 2005! After spending five weeks with the Maltese Capuchin missionaries in Kenya last Summer, I saw with my own eyes how the missionaries are motivated by a genuine and mature love for Christ, a love which, as Therese puts it, “gives everything”! Yes, the missionaries really give up everything (their native land, their family clan, their people, their comfortable lifestyle, etc.) and like Christ offer themselves as “bread broken for the life of the world” (cf. Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for ‘World Mission Sunday 2005’). I reflected and realized that the missionaries radically put to practice the words which they pronounce at the moment of consecration: “Take and eat, this is my body ... take and drink, this is my blood” as well as Jesus’ affirmation that: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13).
In this year dedicated to the Eucharist, their example helped me to understand better the "eucharistic" sense of the Chrisitan life. Their example of true and mature love (which involves many sacrifices!) I will always carry in my heart and strive to live it out in the concrete situations I find myself in. May the coming World Mission Sunday 2005 encourage us to spiritually assist the missionaries through our prayers and to ardently pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send more missionaries in his harvest for truly: “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few!” (Mt 9:37).
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