THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost 9 October 2011

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

Our Lord uses the occasion of the Pharisees testing Him to teach us about Himself. 

The first lesson: “What is the greatest commandment?” In telling us what God demands of us first and foremost Jesus is telling us a great deal about God and therefore Himself. St. John tells us that God is love. This greatest and first commandment then is to imitate God and love what God loves in the manner in which He loves. It is impossible for us to love infinitely as God does because we are finite creatures, but it is possible for us to love completely with all our heart and soul. This is the first commandment the second is to love the other creatures (principally men) that God loves. Since they are our fellow creatures it is only logical that we love them as we love ourselves. 

God is love. This is who He is or even what He is. God is perfection in every area that we may consider; He is omnipotent, omniscient, and all holy, etc. Love though shines forth more splendidly than the rest. It is because of God’s love for men that He sent His Son to this earth. It was love for us that brought Jesus to sacrifice Himself for us. It is God’s love that continues this sacrifice in an unbloody manner (In the Mass) every day until the end of time. It is Jesus’ love even for these Pharisees that prevents Him from striking them dead right then and there. God is always patient because He loves. He is always ready to forgive because He loves and knows our weaknesses. He is always just because He loves. It is love that seems to move God in all His other perfections.

In calling upon us to imitate Him, Jesus wishes for us to love. God loves us and desires only the best for us, but He has given us a free will and will not impose love and happiness upon us. God invites us to love and gives us many reasons to love, but we must make the decision to either love or not love.

St. Paul tells us that the greatest of all virtues is love. The others will pass away but love will abide forever. If we wish therefore to have eternal life we must love. It is not just any love that we are speaking of but it is a true and ordered love according to the will of God. “Self-love” is often condemned as a vice because it is a disordered love that places one’s self above or before God. If we truly love ourselves then we will not allow this vice to invert the proper dispositions of our love.

Love comes or develops in many different degrees. Love is not just all sentiment. Too often we consider that we do not love if we do not feel affection, or emotion. The will influences every aspect of our being including our love. We must often begin with a weak or unclear love in our intellect placed there simply by an act of the will, then as we cooperate with the grace of God and actively pursue a greater and deeper love, it grows until it completely consumes us. As our love draws nearer to perfection we will be able to speak with St. Paul: not I, but Christ living with me.

The second lesson is that Jesus is God and Man. Jesus loves as God loves because He is God. In asking the Pharisees how David can call the Christ his son, Jesus is offering us a most powerful lesson, which the Pharisees missed because they had blinded themselves.

For the redemption to be applicable to us it is necessary that a fellow human pay that price, but for the redemption to be sufficient it is necessary that an infinite Being make it. Therefore we clearly understand that it is true that Jesus is both God and Man, and in this way He was able to save us from our sins and open for us the gates of heaven. This too is all brought about because of God’s love for us. Jesus is God and therefore He loves us as God. Jesus is Man and therefore He loves us as Man. We in a sense have a double claim to God’s love for us. Knowing this only increases our responsibility to reciprocate that love and to share it among one another as He has done for us.

It is not asking too much of us when God commands us to love Him with our entire being and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (even our enemies). Cooperating with His grace we can do this most perfectly. We may have to begin small and build up with patient prayer, study and reflection, but we can do it. If we wish to enter into heaven with God then we must do it. Let us therefore earnestly ask and seek this love from God, striving to increase it day by day.