Today is the thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
As we careen toward Advent and then Christmas, which is just 2 months from today, we’re reminded in today’s Gospel what matters most to us. Love of God and neighbor.
It seems the Scriptures are telling us that one way of loving God is to also love each other. It seems they aren’t as completely separate things like we sometimes try to make them. If we fail to love others we also are failing to love God, regardless of how we nuance it.
As we look around our communities and our world there are always people we’re not sure deserve to be loved. Sometimes they are people who have down awful things, like the person on death row. Sometimes we extend that denial of love to those who don’t look like us, talk like us, or even vote like us. There’s real spiritual danger in that.
Unfortunately we are all capable of doing awful things. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote that “the line between good and evil runs not through states nor between classes nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart.”
As Pogo said “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
The Apostle Paul famously wrote in Romans, “why do I not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want is what I do.”
To be sure there are examples every day of those who are misbehaving or bringing evil to the world when they should be bringing love, but we are that man, and woman, as well.
So today, let’s pray for the strength and wisdom to really love God and one another as we are required. Let’s not look only at the wrong committed by others but let’s look inwardly as well.
Loving God requires us to love one another, even if we have to hold our nose sometimes. Just remember sometimes others are holding their noses with us as well.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
