GOD OF THE FORSAKEN, GOD OF LOVE.
October 25, 2020
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A.
A Lebanese proverb says, “Love overlooks defects; hatred
magnifies them.” An Inca proverb adds, “Love can neither be bought nor sold,
its only price is love.”
Ours is a God full of pity. He expresses his compassion and
pity by taking the party of the less fortunate, the outcasts, the abandoned,
the migrants, the forsaken of our societies. The psalm 34:7 sings rightly, “The
Lord hears the cry of the poor. Blessed be the Lord.” That is actually so true
and uplifting to know that the weak, the orphan, the widow, the marginalized,
and all kinds of poor are the friends of God. That he gives priority to their
voices. He does so, because of his great love and compassion.
Love is what describes the best of our God. Love is his
name, love is his way, and love is what he expects the most from us. Today’s
liturgy could easily be summarized in one verse of the Gospel, the answer of
Jesus to the scholar of the Law: “You shall love the Lord, your God … You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.” For, love is the measure and the highest price
of all things. Thus, the Mexican singer and actor, Jorge Alberto Negrete Moreno
did well to sing those words of St. Teresa of Avila, “Amor con amor se paga”,
love is repaid with love. The love for God is shown through the love of the
neighbor.
Questioned about the first and greatest of all commandments,
the Lord Jesus did not hesitate to profess the heart of the Judaism, the ‘Sh'ma
Yisrael’, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these” (Cf.
CCC. 2196). Our relationship with the Lord can only be measured through the
love we have for him and others. Religiosity is not a mere devotion or
spiritism without any concrete and tangible impact of the belief on life. In
other words, faith is not a vain word. It is proved true in love. Love,
consequently, becomes action and a full set of the inner dispositions. Love is
said by words and acted on the body.
The answer of the Lord Jesus to the doctor of the Law in
today’s Gospel is the more evocative: “love the Lord, your God, with all your
heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The whole being is to be
made an instrument of love. This simple answer shows how demanding it is to
love God. And then, that love for God reaches its completion when it opens us
to love others: “love your neighbor as yourself.” What the Lord means here is
that, if one loves the Lord God with all his being, he should also be able to
love all that the Lord loves the way he is loved. Because the genuine love of
God is not exclusive, but rather inclusive. It disposes us to love the way God
loves and see things the way God himself sees them and acts with them.
The love we have for God is what will lead us to fulfill the
exhortation given through Moses to the Israelites in the first reading. For, he
who loves does nothing evil to others. He rather seeks a way to hear, feel, and
answer to the needs of his fellows. Because the Lord has a predilected and
preferential love for the poor, he hears them when they cry out to him. If we
pretend to be in love with the Lord, we should be well disposed to love the
poor the way God loves them, hears them, and give an answer to their cries.
Love, let us say it frankly, is the most demanding of all
the commandments. It is why love stands as the first and the greatest of all.
Therefore, he who loves, for having complied with the most complicated, can
easily fulfill all the other commandments without any difficulty. When one
finds it hard to love others, it is a sign that he does not truly love God. And
if we make it the more complicated to love God, it is simply because we do not
rightly love ourselves.
Some people have understood the love for the self as
selfishness. And because limiting all things to the narcissism and a chronic
navel-gazing, they have fallen into the idolatry of the self. The egotists
think the world boils down to them. On the contrary, the love for oneself that
the Lord recommends is about not to hurt ourselves with evil. By not hurting
oneself, man learns to value others and does nothing that could hurt them.
Because we seek life for ourselves as a great treasure, we will also wish life
to others. People who are ready to do all kinds of evils to others express
through their actions their inner void, the absence of love from their heart.
Our world is the way it is today, simply because many people
do not truly love themselves. And because they do not love themselves, they
think it is others who do not love them. As consequence, they do all kinds of
evil to harm others. In so doing, though they think to satisfy their deficiency
of love, they instead dig a worse abyss of hatred and sinfulness. Love and only
love can fill our deficit of love and the gulf of evil. Therefore, believe that
you are loved just the way you are, and you will as well start loving others
just the way they are.
As Christians, we have the mission to become good models.
People by looking at us living must notice how good and how great is the love
we have for God and the love the Lord has for us. Though we are sinners, love
is what moves us onward. It is love that makes us turn from all kind of
idolatry, especially, the idolatry of the self, to embrace and serve God
through serving our brothers and sisters.
When we truly love, we come to realize that the Lord is our
all, our strength, our fortress, our deliverer, our refuge. We said last Sunday
that all were from God and belong to God. The counter side of this is that God
is our all. He who loves is assured of God’s love and fears nothing. He who
does not love dwells in his fears and is haunted by them. The hater fears
anything and anyone and sees them as his potential enemies. Therefore, to
defend himself from them, he has no other option than to hurt them. Love is the
solution of all, hatred is the poison of one’s life. And let us conclude with
these words of Mother Teresa inviting to the practicality of love, she said:
“Poverty is not made by GOD, it is created by you and me when we don't share
what we have.” Love others as you love yourself, share with others as you will
like them to share with you. For, just as God loves the poor, so he loves those
who care for the poor more.
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