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30
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Sunday in ordinary time. Year A October 26, 2014
I love you! Three small words that can be very diverse and can have such different meanings. It may be easy to say
I love you to your spouse or your parents or to your children but its often hard to say it to others.
So what then is love?
It could be affection, I love my mother; or pleasure, I loved that meal; or maybe it could be emotion, attraction,
or attachment. It could also be a virtue like kindness, compassion, concern.

In the gospel today a crafty lawyer asks Jesus what is the most important law of the 613 in the Torah. Jesus replies,
You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul and with your entire mind. This is the
greatest and first commandment. Then he adds: The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
But what does he mean? Are we to love God the way we love our parents, our spouse or our children? Are we to
love each other in the same way? Am I to love you and you to love me? Are we to love those who dont love us?
How do we understand and describe this love for God?

St. Augustine said: Love, and do what you like He didnt just say Do what you like, but he said Love and do
what you like. The word love changes the entire meaning of the statement, and thats what Jesus is doing in the
Gospel today.

The command he gives us today, to love God and those around us, is not really a command. What hes suggesting
is a way of life, a way of loving thats really not love unless its spontaneous. What hes proposing is not a new set
of rules, what hes giving us is a whole new approach to life and to our relationship with others.

He says there is only one commandment with two inseparable parts, and the key word in both is love, but really it
seems that there are three loves involved not just two. Love of God, love of others, and love of self. Of course the
love of God, the source of all being and life, comes first. Then comes the love for all those in whom God dwells and
in all living things created by him. Because they are objects of his love, they must also be objects of our love. Lastly
there is the love of self. We are created by the love of God, in his image, so we are all worthy of being loved.

Sometimes we may think its easier to love God than others but actually I think it may be the opposite. God is our
father, God is God, God is real, but God is unseen. People on the other hand are tangible; theyre right in front of
us. We can see them, hear them, smell them, touch them and interact with them. Their influence in our lives
becomes real in our conscience.
Its not this way with God and like Moses on the mountain; we can only see traces of his divine presence as he
passes by.

So then we can, and do show God that we love him by loving what he loves, by the way we love our neighbor. Our
churchs tradition also goes so far to say that we do not love God if we do not love each other.

Its true that we love God when we show that affection to friends and relatives but thats not enough. Gods love is
far more expansive than just the people we are intimate with.
Loving God is caring for widows and orphans, its feeding hungry people, visiting the sick, and helping those who are
forced to live on the streets.


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If our love is open and generous like Gods we will work to do what we can to help provide decent living conditions
for the poor and help to make sure that everyone has clean water to drink and fresh unpolluted air to breath.
Loving God is treasuring the world he gave us and all the people within it.

Love is also contagious. When we love and care for others, we spread the love of God throughout the community
and into the world.

The compassion we show for others, especially non Catholics, is the New Evangelization. It proclaims to
everyone much louder than any words could ever do, that the reign of God has been established amongst us.
When we love like this we truly love with the openness and generosity of God.

So now we know that by loving each other we also love God. Where ever there is love there is God. So when we
are deeply loved by another person, it is also Gods love that we are experiencing. He shows love for us through
the people that enter into our lives, he loves us when they love us and we love him when we love them. In the end
there really arent three kinds of love but just one.

Finally we need to say that this love is not necessarily affection, pleasure, attraction, attachment, kindness, concern
or romantic love.

It is as the first reading says; treating every single person with deep respect, with justice, and with compassion. It
reaches out to those who dont like us, to those who behave badly and to those who may bring us harm and right
now with everything thats happening in our world for many this will be very, very hard to do.

Its a way of relating to others that helps them to become more caring and loving of themselves, of others and of
God. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians today, You observed the sort of life we lived when we were with you.and
you were led to become imitators of us, and of the Lord.

This is the core of evangelization. It is gently leading others to find the God who loves them by loving those around
them. What I am to myself becomes what I am to others and vice versa, and together we all go to God as he comes
to us in love.

My dad was a very proud man who was raised in a time where men didnt express their feelings verbally. Saying
that he loved us was very hard for him. A few days before he died as we all sat around his hospital bed he told us
all to listen that he had an important message for us and he was only going to say it once.
Then he told us that we all need to learn to love each other just as God loves us and that we needed to pass this
message on to everyone.
Im a lot like him; I often have trouble expressing my feelings verbally so I try hard to live a life of love. Sometimes I
fail but I keep trying.

I love you! Three small words that can be very diverse and can have such different meanings. As I said earlier it
may be easy to say I love you to your spouse or your parents or to your children but its often hard to say it to
others. We certainly can turn to each other and say I love you, you can do it right now if you wish, but we can also
say it by our actions, by what we do for each other and by how we treat each other. This is the love that Jesus is
talking about, not just here in the church but everywhere, everyday.