26/10/2008 - 30th. Sunday Ordinary
Time - Year A
1st. Reading Ex 2,20-26 Psalm 17 2nd. Reading 1 Thes 1,5-10 Gospel Mt 22,34-40
"I believe the Church, One". This is an important profession
of our faith because the unity of the Church is to witness the unity in God!
God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is one God, the sole God, and so
the various ecclesial communities are one fold of the Lord, one family, one
body with various members alive because animated by the same Spirit. Unity is
the work and gift of God, a continuous miracle, a grace that manifests the love
of the divine Persons. What Jesus says about the other reality of God which
is the unity of the couple in matrimony is to be said for the unity of the Church:
"man is not to separate what God had joined together"! Our ideas,
convictions, customs, dreams and projects, nothing is to break what God wanted
united. We are children of the one God, disciples of one Master, alive by the
same Spirit; we are to witness to this truth. We can do it if we remain united
even if we have to suffer injustices, as st. Paul encourages doing. He tells
us that it is a shame for the Christians to go to lawyers and judges to settle
down arguments among themselves. (1Cor.6,7). Every day the Christians pray "thy
Kingdom come", because they want to see God reigning, but instead they
want to reign! We pray to the Father: "thy will be done", and then
we separate what He had united! The unity of the Church is a gift and a blessed
that we cannot renounce: we can renounce to all the richness and projects, but
not to this one. There is only one motive that may justify division and this
is when a brother or a group of brothers renounce the faith or turn against
the bishop: we are to distance ourselves from them. "I believe the Church,
one". These words carry a great and heavy commitment. We do it willingly
and with faith, because we know that the gift of unity is the most beautiful
witness that we can give of God and the miracle by which: "All may be one.
As you, Father, are in me and I in you, may they also be one, so that the world
may believe that you have sent me" (Jn.)
The commandment of loving the other is old as man himself. As from the day God
created him, he gave him the capacity to love and the need to be loved. All
have the two that help them live in communion with one another. Who lives in
communion has the joy of heart and spreads it around him! The one who doesn't
exercise the ability to love and doesn't accept to be loved makes it difficult
to oneself to enjoy the communion with the others and falls into depression
and spreads around only suffering. Unfortunately we are prone to selfishness
and pride: that's why we find it hard to love and to be loved, and often we
choose not to suffer. This is the sin that destroys man, keeping him for being
joyful.
God wants man to be free from evil, and it's because of this that he commands
us to love. But God knows that this does not come natural or easy to us, and
so he wants to be present in us with his faithfulness and the power to love.
For God to be present in us, we need to love him, stay in communion with him,
and to make this possible he sent Jesus! He gives us a new love, free from pride
and selfishness: he shows us this by being obedient to the Father until the
cross and the compassion towards the ones who have crucified him.
We can come to know the true love of God and of our neighbor in the way Jesus
lived it. His answer to the doctor of the law is more an explanation of what
he was already living and was about to live until the end. Let us keep our eyes
fixed on him to imitate him.
Even st. Paul urges us to this and apart of Jesus, he invites us to imitate
him, because since he was captured by the Lord, he lived according to his teaching
without looking at the difficulties. The life of the Christians is to become
a 'great example' as the life to the Thessalonians to whom he writes the letter.
They had converted and turned away from idols, leaving behind their ways of
living that were more expressions of selfishness in all forms: despising other
people's lives, family life, sexual impurity, unfaithfulness in marriage, violence,
meanness. Turning away form idolatries the Christians serve the living and true
God, the God who loves every human being, who has compassion for the poor and
the orphan, who defends the widow, and take care of the stranger. The Christian,
who lives as a stranger to this world, because he knows that his place is in
heaven, looks with sympathy the strangers of this world and helps them to feel
the goodness of the Father. The Christians does not limit himself to give something
materially of the love of God, but also would want him to know that great gift
received, that is of knowing Jesus, "his Son who is to free is from the
coming wrath", and opens for us the way to eternal life!