30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A – Green)
FIRST READING (Exodus 22:20-26):
Love and obedience to the Lord require that the people of Israel show charity and compassion toward others, especially the weak, the alien, and the captives.
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.”
RESPONSORIAL PSALM (Psalm 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51; Response: 2)
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
The LORD lives and blessed be my rock!
Extolled be God my savior.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
SECOND READING (1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10)
Because they welcomed the apostle’s preaching of the Gospel and remained faithful to it despite all trials, the Thessalonian Christians became a model to other believers. Paul writes to encourage them further.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS:
You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit, so that you became a model for all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves openly declare about us what sort of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.
ALLELUIA (John 14:23)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord,
and my Father will love him and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GOSPEL (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.”
REFLECTION:
The ability to know what is truly important is essential to our life. In school, for example, we are taught in reading comprehension about the importance of the topic sentence of a paragraph. The topic sentence is the main idea of the paragraph, and being able of the paragraph, and being able to identify it helps one understand what the whole paragraph is saying. Even in doing things, it has always been a wise advice that when several tasks are at hand, we must identify the important ones and start with them.
Our readings this Sunday (see the readings above) also talk about being to identify what is truly important. In the Gospel (see Matthew 22:34-40), a scholar of the law asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” There are 613 laws that a faithful Jew should observe. That is why the question of the scholar is a very valid question. “We have so many laws. But of these laws, which is the most important?”
To this question Jesus immediately responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…” And by adding, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” he summarizes the whole law and the prophets. These are now the two important commandments. The answer of Jesus shows his ability to see from among the many provisions of the law which is truly important. Jesus has the ability to look at many things and see what lies at their very heart. Jesus has an eye that differentiates what is essential from what is incidental.
This is something that we should learn from Jesus. Sometimes we confuse what is important with what is urgent. Urgency does not always make something important. And not every important matter is urgent. There are also times when we focus so much on trivial matters and spend so much time on them that we miss the necessary ones. We miss the forest for the trees.
We need to look at things the way Jesus does because Jesus is love and love is the greatest of the commandments. It is also about being able to identify what or who is truly important. Only one who knows what or who is truly essential will be able to truly love.
Loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind is possible only if we accept that God is important to us. We cannot love God with us. We cannot love God with everything that we are, with everything that we have, if we do not acknowledge that God should be loved above all else. St. Paul, in the second reading today (1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10), affirms the Thessalonians because they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven…” They were able to turn to God from idols because they discovered that God is supremely important.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves is also possible only if we discover that our neighbors are as important as ourselves. If you look at yourself as more important than others you will not be capable of truly loving. If you look at wealth, possessions, power, position, and authority as more important than human beings, you will not be able to show genuine care and concern.
In the First Reading (Exodus 22:20-26), the Lord lays down the laws on how the Israelites should deal with others, especially those who are not equal to their status–resident aliens, widows, orphans, and the poor. At the heart of these instructions, God is saying, people are more important than interests from loans or cloaks given as a pledge. Value people and you will be able to love them.
Let us implore Jesus for the grace to see and recognize what is truly important–to have a heart like his and to love as he does.
THE GOSPEL and CARE FOR CREATION:
We now realize that the love of neighbor includes love for all creatures. Nature’s diversity tells us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures depend on each other and complement each other in the service of the common good. – Green Convergence
The Sunday Mass Reading and Reflections by Fr. Reginald R. Malicdem (current rector of Manila Cathedral) are taken from the October 29, 2017 edition of Sambuhay Missalette, printed in the Philippines by St. Paul’s Media Pastoral Ministry.
The Catholic Gospel Digest 