Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today Jesus gives us the two greatest commandments, and they both focus on love. The greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. The second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. In both of these cases, we are called to love. This makes perfect sense, as, if we look at the object in all Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses, the first three deal with love of God (thou shalt not have other gods besides me; thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; and the Sabbath rest), while the other seven deal with love of neighbor (Honor thy father and mother; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or thy neighbor’s goods).
In theory, love is easy. We all probably know that loving God is most important (especially because we’re here at Mass), and we know we need to love our neighbor. In the theoretical realm we are with Jesus 100%. But as it gets down to the nitty gritty, things can seem much more complicated. We can truly start to wonder, “What is love?”
After all, we use the word for lots of things and people: I love my parents; I love my spouse; I love my siblings; I love my friends; I love pizza. But if we love pizza in the same way we love our parents, something is off. And if we love our friends in the same way we love our spouse, that tends to lead to trouble. So love is not so clear a word to understand.
Love today often means a kind of respect for another person’s choices whatever they may be, as long as that person’s choices do not affect me personally. Love seems to mean that anything goes, as long as person really desires something or someone, no matter what objective reality, or even the Church or Bible says. People can try to rationalize all sorts of behavior by stating that God loves us, as if the love of God turns a blind eye to anything fallen or sinful. People are very quick to say, as they’re rationalizing something contrary to Catholic faith or morality, “God loves me as I am,” to which I quickly respond, “But He loves you too much to leave you as you are.” God’s love is a divinizing love; it is a love that seeks to make us like Himself, which means it is a love that calls us to reject all that is sinful and broken in us. We cannot appeal to the love of God to support the killing of an elderly person in euthanasia; we cannot appeal to the love of God to support sex outside of marriage; we cannot appeal to the love of God to support doing that which is contrary to God’s law or the natural law.
And that divinizing love, because it is who God is, does not stop with God. It begins with God, and the love we have for God has to be the most important, but to truly be the love of God, it also has to extend to our brothers and sisters. St. John says it this way in his first letter, “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. […]whoever loves God must also love his brother.” We are given a challenging example of that in our first reading: “‘You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. […] If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.’” Now, before you tune me out because you think I’m going to support one political party or another, let me make this clear: I am not supporting a Republican or Democratic Party platform. The Church supports both the right to immigrate, as well as the right of states to legitimately limit immigration. The following are quotes from Paragraph 2241 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent that they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. […]
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens. [emphasis original]
We can civilly discuss all day current policies in place in the United States. But the key is whether or not our approach to immigrants is one based in love. And as Catholics we should especially consider the plight of immigrants, even as we protect our own country, because the words from Exodus could very easily be changed to: You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens from Italy, or Ireland, or Germany, or Poland. If we can stand before the judgment seat of God with a clear conscience on the way we speak about and treat immigrants, and that it was based on love of God and neighbor, then we have nothing to fear. But so often, our idea of love, whether it comes to immigrants, or to other moral issues, needs to be purified by the Word of God and the teachings of the Church, so that it truly reflects the love of God which seeks to make us like Himself.