Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

[Readers of the Fr. Tom Lucas’ October 26, 2014 homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in ordinary time need to visualize a bit.  Cues given in the Square Brackets below in the text.]

Today’s readings focus on the law as it has come down to us over the ages. The library at the Law School of Seattle University where I teach has who knows how many miles of shelves of law books. The Law is important, because it gives us guidelines, rules and regulations about how to live in society and with one another.

The traditions of our Hebrew ancestors were full of rules and regulations:  613 mitzvot:  248 do’s, 365 don’ts.   I’m not a lawyer, but an art teacher:  let’s try to visualize that together.  [At this point, Fr. Tom opened and closed his ten fingers as quickly as he could 61 times, and then held up three fingers to complete the array of 613.]   Now that’s a lot of laws: laws about what to eat and not eat, what to wear, how to wash your dishes, what to touch and not to touch, who to talk to and not talk to, who to love and not to love. 

Yet it wasn’t always so:  our tradition tells us that on the holy mountain God gave Moses ten commandments [ten fingers]; on the first tablet, three that govern our relationship with God—no idols, revere the name of the Lord, keep the Sabbath day holy [three fingers]; seven that show us how to live with one another in society, honoring our parents and family, avoiding violence and murder, not committing adultery, not stealing or lying, not desiring our neighbors loved ones or goods.  So 613 rules are really contained in ten.  Why ten?  Probably because that’s how many fingers we have to count off on. 

Yet when the opponents of Jesus tried to trip him up with their trick question about which commandment was the most important, Jesus, good rabbi that he was, reached deeply into the tradition of the Torah and extracted the very core of our belief that is found in Exodus and Deuteronomy:  “love the Lord your God will all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus reminded them that the 10 commandments were really two commandments [2 fingers] which, he reveals, are actually only one commandment in the end:  to love. [2 fingers interlock to become one]. 

One commandment:  Love.   Love God, Love your neighbor.  “Love,” says St. Augustine, “and do what you will.”  It sounds too good to be true, too simple.   But, like so many of the teachings of Jesus, “simple” does not mean “easy”.  Why? Because we all know that real love is the most difficult thing in the world to find, maintain, and nourish.

This one commandment of love brings us to the core of our faith: a faith that always and ever reaches out in loving service to the other, which never exists just for our own advantage.  The love we see made flesh in the life and death of Jesus, the love we see re-enacted every time we gather around this table is love that moves outward, out of the self and its own interests and into union and communion with God and neighbor. As Pope Francis constantly reminds us, it is love that shows itself in mercy, in compassion, and in generosity:  mercy and compassion and generosity that mirror the mercy, compassion, and generosity of God who is creator, redeemer, and conosoler. 

That is why we gather here week after week, month after month, year after year:  to be reminded when we hear the scriptures and when we break the bread and share the cup together that while there might be 613 rules, and 10 commandments, there is, finally only one law:  the law of love we celebrate at this table, and through the witness of our lives. 

Thomas M. Lucas S.J.