Daily Gospel Reflection – Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
August 25, 2023
Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
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."
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says that the whole law depends on love of God and love of neighbor. I want to reflect on the love of neighbor. For many, to love is equivalent to being a nice guy, or in Flannery O’Connor’s formulation, “having a heart of gold.” Now, there is nothing in the world wrong with being a nice guy or having a heart of gold, but you can easily achieve both of those states and not have love.
For love is not really about fitting in and being friendly; it is willing the good of the other as other. It is wanting what is best for another person and then doing something about it. And this means that real love can be as tough as nails or as disagreeable as a slap in the face—indeed, in Dostoevsky’s phrase, something “harsh and dreadful.”
Compelling an addict to get help or questioning a dysfunctional style of life both involve the willing of the good of the other—and neither will cause people to characterize you as a nice guy. This is why the God who is love is not a kindly Santa Claus who magically makes troubles disappear.
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