Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Gospel reading highlights the two commandments that Jesus says are the greatest: Love of God and love of neighbor. No matter how often we hear these words, we are struck by the demands they place on us.

Jesus brings together the love of God and the love of neighbor as two absolutely inseparable things, like two sides of the same coin. Love of God, whom we cannot see, is false if it is not complemented by the love of people we see and with whom we rub shoulders daily in our workplaces, at school, on the streets, and in our homes.

It's essential to recognize that Jesus does not throw our neighbor into the commandment as an afterthought. Instead, our neighbors, the people around us, are crucial to the commandment to love because it is through the people around us that God makes contact with us daily. Scripture keeps hammering home God's teaching that "anyone who says he loves God but hates his brother or sister is a liar." If we call ourselves "Christian," we must love one another. 

Loving our neighbor as ourselves sounds very nice until we get a good look at some of our neighbors or co-workers. You know well that some people out there push every one of our buttons. There are people out there who can be rude, selfish, and downright unbearable. But we're called to love them anyway. Some people have hurt us and done unspeakable harm to us. No one is free from that, not me, you, anyone, or even Jesus. But we are called to follow the example of Jesus, who hung on the Cross, looked at the people who nailed him to it, and said, "Father, forgive them…" 

To show love to people in complicated circumstances may seem quite impossible. Yet, it is often in these circumstances, when we seek to do God's will, that we must experience the love of God. In these experiences, the love comes from God, dwelling deep within ourselves, a love we open ourselves to when we act as God commands.

Today, we are being asked to look at those shadowy areas of our lives that are sealed off from God. To profess that we love God while harboring resentments or being indifferent to the plight of others is a contradiction. We all want love to be a rose without thorns: smooth and velvety. But, if we follow Christ, we will find that love involves sacrifice and the shadow of the Cross. Love is waiting upon the aged, nursing the sick, patching up quarrels, and listening to the broken-hearted. Love is being kind and courteous to strangers.

Few people expect to discover love in weakness, powerlessness, and suffering. Yet, that is the heart of Christ's message to the world. From his birth in a stable as one who was homeless to his death on the Cross like a common criminal, Jesus always identified with the spiritually, physically, and materially poor of this world. This Gospel is not an ideal to be admired but a way of life to live if we walk humbly with our God.