Love of neighbor

This is my homily for today, the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A.  Today's readings are here.

Just a quick note: this homily is considerably shorter than what I would usually give.  We were asked to keep the preaching short today in order to leave time for a 'sales pitch' for an archdiocesan fundraising initiative called Generation to Generation.  

I also preached to the children today at the mass which is now billed as our Family Mass.  I don't post the text here as it was interactive and mostly spontaneous, with me asking the children many questions about what commandments are, and what it means to love our neighbor.  What follows is today's "adult homily".

Jesus doesn't just give us two commandments today.  He also interjected a few brief words of commentary about each one.  He characterized the first commandment, to love God, as the first and greatest commandment.  But did you catch what he said about the second commandment?  After reciting the first one, he said, “The second is like it.”  The second law is like the first.  There is some sort of relationship or connection between these two laws.  It seems love of God is intimately connected with love of neighbor.

We might note that the first and greatest commandment, that we love God with our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole mind – is a “vertical” commandment.  It draws us upward, toward God.  God must come first in our lives.

The second commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves, draws us outward, toward others.  It is a “horizontal” commandment. 

According to these two commandments, we must have both a vertical orientation, toward God, and a horizontal orientation, toward other people.  And what do the two commandments have in common?  Love.  We must love God and love our neighbor.  It is love that makes the second commandment like the first.

I’d like to say a word today about this love of neighbor which we’re commanded to do.  I don’t think there is enough love in the world today.  I think there is too much of the opposite of love of neighbor all around us.  Too much division into opposing camps of neighbor against neighbor.  Too much hatred of neighbor.  Too much perpetrating of injustice upon neighbors.  

If we would love our neighbor – really love our neighbor, as Jesus loved us, by serving us and sacrificing himself for us and suffering for us – if we would love our neighbors the same way, the result would be astonishing.  The world would be transformed.  Wars would end.  Civil strife and conflict would end.  Poverty would end.  Feuds and grudges and estrangements would end. 

It sounds so simple and so beautiful.  We may wonder: why hasn’t this already been done?  It hasn’t been done because love is hard.  Loving neighbors, really loving them to the end, as Jesus loved us to the end, is hard.  Without Jesus’s sacrificial love to sustain us, we won’t be able to manage it on our own.  

That’s why we’re here today.  Jesus’s sacrificial love is made present here when we gather around the altar.  We’re fed the bread of life, so we can do the hard work of loving our neighbors as Jesus has loved us.  

We are given a great gift here every Sunday – a gift beyond compare.  Let us not squander it.  Let us bring the sacrificial love of God to our neighbor.  The world won’t be the same, and neither will we.