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.”
To love is to have peace
1. They gathered together. Jesus is very clear when it comes to dealing with people, and He is also shrewd. Be cautious in your interactions with others and in the care of self-love, which is different from selfishness. Self-love is positive, because it indicates the care of yourself by knowing your limits. While selfishness is to overpower others, at their expense, and even destroying them. With this in mind, I invite you to reflect that not all the battles of your life must be fought, because there are battles that you must give up even if you are right. Because let’s remember that it is preferable to always have peace, rather than to be right. Always seek and take care of the peace of your heart.
2. What the law says. We always turn to the law, and we even look for people to be judges of what happens to us. We want them to agree with us or to judge the situation with us. As a priest, people often speak to me to judge, “Father, yesterday Ms. So-and-So went to mass yesterday, she cannot receive communion, speak to her”. Even I am not spared, “Father, you are not wearing your cassock today, that’s not good”. Today Jesus teaches you that love is beyond laws and laws are not to mark the life of others, but to guide our own life. But we end up suffocating the life of others, their spirituality and even their love with laws.
3. Love of God. Loving God and understanding that He has a relationship with me is what allows me to love and act towards others. This implies that there is freedom within me that leads me to the greatest act of love, which isn’t kissing or manifesting feelings or hugs. The greatest act of love is “forgiving”. I always say that there are three types of forgiveness out of love: “I forgive you, but help me to regain trust in you, because I’ve lost it, and I love you”. Another type is “I forgive you, but let’s go on with life because we see each other every day since we live or work together”, and the third one is, “I forgive you, but please distance yourself from me, don’t appear in my life any more”. Because you must also take care of self-love and the presence of God in your life. Loving is a free decision and if you’re really free in life it’s because you know how to love.
Never forget that something good is on the way!
God bless you and protect you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
