30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Liturgy of the Hours, 2nd week, psalter
We are accustomed to saying, and to being told, that God loves us. We are even taught that we must love as Jesus does. But what does all this mean? And above all: how can we love as God does? If we look carefully at the readings for this Sunday, we immediately understand that the commandment of love is God's way and the true path of life for every person.
The reflections on today's liturgy are taken from the September/October 2020 edition of the missal “On Your Word”.
FIRST READING
From the Book of Exodus (Ex 22:20-26)
Thus says the Lord: “You shall not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, when they cry out to me for help, I will surely hear their cry; my anger will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword: your wives will become widows and your children orphans. If you lend money to one of my people, to the poor person among you, you shall not act toward him as a moneylender: you shall not charge him interest. If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset, because it is his only covering, the cloak for his skin; what else could he sleep in? If he cries out to me, I will hear him, for I am compassionate.” The word of God.
Reflection on the first reading
If we wanted to give a title to this thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we could call it “the Sunday of memory and love.” Let us look in particular at what the passage from the Book of Exodus tells us. The Decalogue marked the beginning of a large section of this book in which the precepts and regulations to be observed once the people reached the Promised Land were set out. Contrary to what we have memorized, the Law was much broader than the Ten Commandments; the Hebrew Bible in fact contains 613 laws, commandments, prescriptions, and prohibitions. We might be tempted to think that this is suffocating, since we are no longer accustomed to so many rules. The idea underlying all these precepts is actually fascinating: no area of human life lies outside the relationship with God. All of life is held within this great embrace of love. Is there anything in a mother or father that lies outside their love for their children? If that happens, it means they are no longer doing what is best for the family. The weakest - orphan, widow, foreigner - is the object of love.
SECOND READING
From the First Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians (1 Thes 1:5c-10)
Brothers and sisters, you know very well how we behaved among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word amid great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit, so that you became a model for all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we have no need to say anything. They themselves report what kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to await from heaven his Son, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath. The word of God.
Reflection on the second reading
“Peace, whoever knows it knows that joy and sorrow in equal parts make it up.” Thus writes Paul Claudel in his work The Tidings Brought to Mary. This seems to me a good interpretation of the passage that the liturgy offers us as the second reading. In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul recalls two dimensions of Christian life. The word of God, which he proclaimed, was in fact received “amid great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit.” There has never been a time when the work of evangelization did not have its sufferings; it could not be otherwise, because that word brings life, and every life comes into the world after the pains of childbirth. Yet there has never been a time when that same word was not sustained by the mysterious yet evident action of the Spirit. In the end, this had been the promise made by the risen Lord to his disciples. The proof of faith is life, a life learned by following those who go before us on the journey. Paul points to the Thessalonians as a model in this respect. How beautiful it is to be a model of faith, someone others can look to.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
From the Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 22:34-40)
At that time, 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 on the Gospel of the day
What had Jesus silenced the Sadducees about? We need only read what comes before our Gospel passage. The Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead, had asked Jesus a strange question about a woman who had had seven husbands during her lifetime: “Which of them,” they had asked, “will be her husband in the next life?” (cf. Mt 22:28). An idle question that expected no answer. The real drama when dealing with matters of faith is that questions are often asked that do not involve concrete life. When, in a meeting, I begin to hear phrases like, “But I think, I believe,” I understand that it is time to interrupt the talk show that is about to begin. Theoretical issues used to avoid changing one's life, to prevent conversion, to remain comfortable in our certainties. Today the question concerns the first commandment, the most important, or rather, to use the exact word, the greatest. I imagine how many synagogue meetings had dealt with this topic, just like so many of our church meetings. Jesus answers that the greatest commandment is love: love for God and for one's neighbor. “Love cannot be explained; it makes the world go round, and without it everything becomes meaningless,” sings Cammariere.
