From the Pastor's Desk

RE-OPENING THE CHURCH

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary time

The central theme of today’s readings is the greatest commandment in the Bible, namely, to respond to God’s love for us by loving Him, and then to express that love in action by loving Him living in our neighbor. Our love for God is tested and put into practice by the way we love our neighbor.

The first reading, taken from Exodus explains the second greatest commandment, namely, loving one’s neighbors, especially the underprivileged. The chosen people of Israel should remember that once they were aliens in the land of Egypt. Just as God protected them and treated them kindly, so they are to protect others and treat them with kindness. Thus, they should become a humane society rooted in the basic religious concept of loving God living in their neighbor.

In the second reading, St. Paul congratulates the Thessalonians on the positive effects of their example of loving one another as Jesus had commanded them to do. Their mutual love and their loving reception of Paul and response to his preaching has bolstered the Faith of Christians elsewhere who have heard about them.

In the Gospel today, Jesus combines the commandment to love God with the commandment to love one’s neighbor and gives the result as the one Commandment of supreme importance in Christian life. Jesus underlines the principle that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves because, as God’s children, both of us bear God’s image, and to honor God’s image is to honor Him. Love for our neighbor should not be a matter of feelings, but of deeds by which we share with others the unmerited love that God lavishes on us.