| Readings: | Exodus 22:20-26 1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10 Matthew 22: 34-40 |
| Date: | October 25, 2026, 30th Sunday in Ordinary
Time, Cycle A
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Fr. Jack McCardle, a great Irish storyteller, tells a story about attending the funeral of the father of one of his priest friends. Fr. McCardle had known his friend's parents and had always thought of them as kind of an ideal couple. His friend gave a one sentence eulogy for his father that went like this: My father was married to my mother for 56 years and in that time he really came to love her.
There is something about the way we normally think about love in our culture that makes this eulogy something we have to think about before we start to get it. There is something about the way we think about religion or faith in our culture that makes the two great commandments Jesus tells us about in today’s Gospel something we have to think about before we start to get it.
I think it is safe to say that most people think of love primarily as an emotion or a feeling. It is something that depends on a certain chemistry, a certain chance combination of variables like looks or personality or attitude or areas of interest. I also think it is safe to say that most people think about faith or religion as something that is an intellectual exercise, a certain set of beliefs or dogma that one buys into. Today’s readings make it very clear that neither of those are what Jesus is talking about when he talks about love and faith.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew actually changes the wording of the first commandment from what it says in Deuteronomy Chapter 6: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your substance. So if we combine the words from Deuteronomy 6 and this Gospel passage, we are commanded to love God with our whole heart, being, substance, mind and soul. What this first commandment means in Jesus’ Jewish culture is not a theological exercise or a feeling at all. It is something that you do with every aspect of your humanity, including your mind, your very breath or life’s spirit, and your material substance and wealth.
So the first great commandment says that our whole life must be an act of loving God. Can anyone of us say that we live that way? I know I can’t. The best I can do is a fraction of what Fr. Jack’s friend said about his father: I have lived 80 years so far and in this time I have only begun to learn how to love God.
Then there is the second part of this foundation of all the law and the prophets. Love your neighbor as your self. How loaded is that one?
In Luke’s version of this story, the scribe questions Jesus further after he states the second great commandment by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus then tells the story of the Good Samaritan, which makes it clear that he is not talking about some generalized neighbor. We are to love whoever is nearby us. And we are to love our neighbor with the same kind of total human involvement with which we are to love God. The passage from Exodus makes that clear. Loving our neighbor means treating the widows and the orphans justly, making sure they have food and clothing and shelter. It means treating aliens, who have no rights under the law, with mercy and kindness. It means focusing on the human aspect of our business dealings not just the numbers.
The love that these two commandments are talking about is not a feeling or an emotion or something that we have to wait to happen. It is an act of the will, a choice. It is visiting that senior citizen even when you don’t feel like it because she tells the same story over and over again. It is how an Amish community acted back some 20 years ago after a man killed many children at their schoolhouse. Instead of the usual outcry against the killer, they reached out to the widow and family of the killer, offering them forgiveness and comfort, and even part of the financial aid that poured in from around the world. They didn't wallow in their bad situation or look for God or someone else to do something about it. With God's help, they made a choice to act with love.
The love that Jesus commands us to is a doing, not a feeling. What our culture sometimes forgets is that by doing we can generate feelings. I will close with another of Fr. Jack’s stories. A bitter woman went to a divorce lawyer and complained that her husband was making her miserable and she wanted to divorce him and do it in a way that would really make him feel the pain. The lawyer, who was very wise, advised her, “If you really want to make the divorce as painful as possible for him, for the next six months treat him like a king. Compliment him at every turn; cook all his favorite meals, cater to his every whim. When he has really started to realize how much he needs you, then divorce him. “ After six months went by, the lawyer contacted the woman and asked if she was ready to start the divorce proceedings. She replied, “Why would I want to do that? Our marriage is divine!”