Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 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.”
The Pharisees. They seek Jesus because He had silenced the Sadducees. They seek him to join their party and add credibility to it, to have Jesus in their faction. We can’t do that. We can’t say that Jesus is on one side or on the other, so don’t ask Jesus to take sides. Jesus is neither conservative nor progressive, neither traditionalist nor radical, he doesn’t belong to any group or movement. Jesus is God and loves us all – loving us to the extreme of shedding his precious blood on the cross for us. Let’s seek Jesus to bring unity, so that we may grow in love for one another. Let’s not think Jesus “belongs” to one group or movement. Jesus is in all of us – not only in the priest who wears a cassock or in the one who wears a T-shirt; He isn’t only in the one who plays the organ or the piano, or the one who plays the guitar. We should look to Jesus for love; to love him, to fall in love with life and with him – not for him to be on one side or the other.
To test him. How many times do we test God? Many times, we seek God more than anything to ask him to indulge our whims. Go to God and don’t try to test him. He knows you and you know him. Don’t ask Him for things you want. Instead, ask Him to help you be able to see and understand. A friend of mine says that there are times when God sets out tiny lights for us, to show us the way. But sometimes, we should ask him for brighter lights because it is so hard for us to see the path that He wants us to walk along.
Love is the crucial issue. God loved us so much that he left us a lesson on the cross. When Jesus was crucified, he was crucified to the horizontal and vertical beams of the cross to remind us that our love for God prevails in order to be able to love our neighbor. Look at the cross and notice this logic: if your head and feet are in God, most surely your hands will be nailed to the hands of your brothers and sisters. This is why you should try to love God and love your brothers and sisters from Him.
God bless you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Don’t forget: Heaven is Our Goal!
Father Luis, as we affectionately know him, is a Catholic Diocesan Priest, from Tucuman, Argentina. He was ordained Priest at the Cathedral of Tucuman on March 23, 2012. Father Luis graduated in Theology from the Catholic University of Argentina, Magister in Liturgy of the Argentine Society of Liturgy and is currently undergraduate in family guidance at the Austral University. Father Luis is Co-Founder and Director of Catholic Digital Missioners.
