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Stained Glass Winodw from Palmer Episcopal Church, Houstan, TX

This Sunday in our Church
"Love Thy Neighbor"

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Liturgy of the Word:
Exodus 22:20-26
Psalm 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10

Reading I
Ex 22:20-26

Thus says the LORD:
"You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry.
My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword;
then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.

"If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people,
you shall not act like an extortioner toward him
by demanding interest from him.
If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge,
you shall return it to him before sunset;
for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.
What else has he to sleep in?
If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."

Gospel
Mt 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

Homily:
Fr. Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., Pontifical Household Preacher (Vatican)

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Adding the words "as yourself," Jesus has put a mirror in front of us to which we cannot lie; he has given us an infallible measure to discover if we do or do not love our neighbor. We know very well, in every circumstance, what it means to love ourselves, and what we would like others to do for us.

If we pay close attention, we notice that Jesus does not say: "What the other does to you, you do to him." This would still be the "lex talionis": "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

What he does say -- what you would like the other to do to you, you do to him (cf. Matthew 7:12) -- is very different.

Jesus considered love of neighbor as "his commandment," the one in which the whole law is summarized. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). Many identify the whole of Christianity with the precept of love of neighbor, and they are not wrong.

But we must try to go a bit beyond the surface of things. When one speaks of love of neighbor, one thinks immediately of charitable "deeds," of the things that must be done for our neighbor: give him to eat, to drink, visit him; in brief, to help our neighbor. But this is a result of love, it is not yet love. Benevolence comes before beneficence: Before doing good, one must want to do good.

Charity must be "without pretense," that is, sincere (literally, "without hypocrisy," Romans 12:9); one must love "with a pure heart" (1 Peter 1:22). One can, in fact, be charitable and give alms for many reasons that have nothing to do with love: to embellish oneself, to be regarded as a benefactor, to win paradise, and even to appease a bad conscience.

Much of our charity to Third World countries is not dictated by love, but by a bad conscience. We realize the scandalous difference that exists between us and them and we feel responsible in part for their misery. One can lack charity even when "being charitable!"

It would be a fatal error to compare heartfelt love and charitable deeds, or to take refuge in good interior dispositions toward others in order to find in this an excuse for our own lack of active and concrete charity.

If you come across a poor hungry man shivering with cold, said St. James, of what use is it if you say to him: "Poor you, go, warm up and eat something," but give him nothing of what he needs?

"Little children," adds St. John, "let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18). Therefore, it is not about denigrating external works of charity, but about ensuring that the latter are based on a genuine feeling of love and benevolence.

Heartfelt or interior charity is a charity we can all practice, it is universal. It is not a charity that some -- the rich and healthy -- can offer and others -- the poor and sick -- can only receive. All can give and receive it. Moreover, it is extremely concrete. It is a question of beginning to look with new eyes on the situations and people with whom we live. What eyes? It's simple: with the eyes with which we would like God to look at us -- eyes of forgiveness, of benevolence, of understanding, of pardon!

. . . final paragraph is in comments below . . .

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