\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
How do you love God?\u00c2\u00a0 How do you love others?\u00c2\u00a0 Who are you being called to love?\u00c2\u00a0 Have you ever thought about these things, really thought about them?\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s readings challenge you to do just that.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jesus says today that the whole law and the prophets depend on just 2 commandments:\u00c2\u00a0 To love God and to love your neighbor.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus talks about loving God with your whole heart, mind, and soul.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words you need to desire what God desires – this is the heart.\u00c2\u00a0 Then value and understand all things the way God does – this is the mind.\u00c2\u00a0 And finally actively live in accordance with those desires and that understanding, choosing what God would choose in your place – this is the soul.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s loving God- being in communion with what his desires and his will are for you.\u00c2\u00a0 And, you can be sure that God loves you back, because God is love.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Jesus doesn’t stop there.\u00c2\u00a0 Because you must love your neighbors as you love yourself treating them as you would want them to treat you, regardless of how you feel.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Usually, we associate love with some pleasant feelings, intense and delightful emotions.\u00c2\u00a0 But the Greek word Jesus used for love means something much deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 It is the word “agape”, and it refers to the type of love that means desiring union with something that is good in itself.\u00c2\u00a0 If you love a person, it means you love spending time with them, getting to know them, and sharing the experiences of life with them.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes, that can be hard, because it means giving selflessly of yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 You see, there is simply no guarantee that your love will be returned.\u00c2\u00a0 This is Christian love: not a passing, self-indulgent emotion, but a courageous lifestyle that puts God first, others second, and self third.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, there’s an interesting contrast between the first and the second reading that sheds light on real love.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus was quoting the Old Testament, so, loving God and neighbor are basic to both the Old and New Covenants.\u00c2\u00a0 In the first reading, love of neighbor is demonstrated by following a set of rules.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, we hear about rules that call for treating foreigners, widows and orphans properly.\u00c2\u00a0 But, there are 631 rules in the Jewish Torah, some of them quite complex and detailed.\u00c2\u00a0 They were structured so that people would be able to do right in the eyes of the Lord.\u00c2\u00a0 It reminds me of secular Governments.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a rule for everything, and when folks find a loophole, then a lower level set of more rules is passed.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, Government keeps plugging loopholes.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s something missing, isn’t there?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s called love.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t legislate love; it has to be experienced; it has to be lived.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contrast the first reading with Paul’s message to the Thessalonians.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul gave his life to the mission he received from Jesus to preach to the Gentiles.\u00c2\u00a0 But that is not all.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul lived the theology he preached as well.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not a theology of “the law”.\u00c2\u00a0 All of Paul’s epistles talk about freedom from the law.\u00c2\u00a0 But rather, it was a theology of imitating Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what he means when he congratulates the Thessalonians, because they, too, gave up their former ways, and became imitators of Paul, just as Paul was an imitator of Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike Paul, they don’t go out and preach to the nations.\u00c2\u00a0 They live their lives in place, in Thessalonia, but now they live them as imitators of Christ- Christ who loved the Father, and loved his neighbor as himself.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, there’s talk of the Thessalonians having to abandon idols.\u00c2\u00a0 That seems so remote from today’s times.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, we don’t have stone idols or gold idols, do we?\u00c2\u00a0 But wait- an idol can be anything that you become obsessed with.\u00c2\u00a0 Something that blinds you from loving God the way I mentioned earlier.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes jobs, football, shopping, and yes, even the responsibilities of life, can do that.\u00c2\u00a0 They are our idols.\u00c2\u00a0 And as for imitating Christ, wouldn’t it be simpler to just have a few rules, rather than be in tune with God’s will for us?\u00c2\u00a0 Deep down, in your heart, God speaks to you about his will for you.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s somebody He is especially calling you to love, maybe somebody in your family- perhaps an estranged spouse, an aging parent, a brother, or a wayward child.\u00c2\u00a0 But it may also be a neighbor- somebody who’s lonely, or sick, or in an institution, or even somebody in prison.\u00c2\u00a0 Whoever you are being called to love. do it now.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0 October 26, 2008 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Ex 22: 20-26; 1 Thes 1: 5c-10; Mt 22: 34-40 Dc. Larry Brockman How do you love God?\u00c2\u00a0 How do you love others?\u00c2\u00a0 Who are you being called to love?\u00c2\u00a0 Have you ever thought about these things, really thought about them?\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s readings challenge you to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}