Virgin of the Poor
Society of Our Lady of Guadalupe, San Francisco
17th Sunday after Pentecost – October 9, 2011
(Mt. 22: 34-46)
Just before the incident in today’s Gospel, Jesus silenced the Pharisees about the coin of tribute, telling them to “render to God the things that are God’s and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Following that, He silenced the Sadducees concerning the widow who married seven brothers, asking in heaven whose wife she will be. He told his tempters that in Heaven there is no marriage so she is wife to none of them. However, the Pharisees approached Him again trying to snare Him with the question of the greatest commandment. This is the way of all teachers of error -- they never stop talking, but are silent in the face of truth.
A certain Pharisee and doctor of the law asked our Lord, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Certainly all the commandments of God are great, so this questioner thought no matter what Jesus answered, the Pharisees would have a pretext to attack Him. But Christ gave this gentleman more than he expected. By His own authority, Jesus clearly tells him, and us, that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with our whole heart, soul and mind.
Jesus did not say, “Fear the Lord thy God.” He said love Him. Fear comes from coercion, having to do things under threat of force. Slaves are in fear of their masters. But love comes from liberty and is the character of children. The Hebrews called God “Abba” which translates best in English as Daddy. Children love their daddies with all their hearts, and that is the kind of relationship we should have with God. Children also stand in awe of their daddies because of daddy’s size and power, and that is what is meant when the Bible says “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” To stand in awe of God is the beginning of wisdom. Having said this, it is also good to fear the punishments of God. Let that kind of fear lead us to love Him.
To love God with our whole heart means we are to love God more than all other things. To love God with our whole soul means to hold on to the truth we have been given, to be obedient to God and firm in our faith. One who loves God with his whole mind puts all his faculties at God’s disposal; that is, his understanding serves God, his wisdom concerns Godly things, and his thoughts dwell on God’s blessings. You can see from this that God wants us and He wants us completely. If you give yourself to our awe-inspiring God then Psalm 118 v. 99, 100 (KJV 119) will become a part of you: “I have understood more than all my teachers” and have “understanding above ancients: because I have sought thy commandments.” This is the reward in this life of loving God with our whole heart, soul and mind and our neighbor as ourselves – an understanding of all of the Law and the Prophets, or as Christ put it, “On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.”
The first three commandments deal with the love of God and the remaining seven with love of neighbor. If we do what Christ tells us, we will become “wiser than the ancients.” What this means in a practical sense is that we will be wiser than all the philosophers throughout history who either did not have the advantage of knowing Christ (e. g., Plato, Aristotle) or who have rejected Christ in their own peculiar system of thought (e. g., Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell).
Our Lord continued in His answer to the Pharisees, telling them that the second commandment is like the first: “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.” Psalm 10: 6 KJV 11:5 tells us that one who loves sin hates his own soul. So one who loves sin does not love his neighbor as himself, because he does not love himself. He hates his soul and loves sin. It is clear from Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan that all men are our neighbors. Jesus also lets us know that He, Himself, is our neighbor because He is the Samaritan who helped the man left for dead on the side of the road in that parable. So, a love of God that doesn’t include Christ, our Neighbor, is of no help to our salvation. If we love our neighbors, we love God, because our neighbors are made in his image.
Had these Pharisees believed that Jesus was the Son of God they would not have tempted Him. Jesus did not want to tell them straight out that He was God, because they would have thought that was blasphemy which would have inflamed them to kill Him. It was not time for that yet. So He asked them such a question, that the question itself would tell them Who He was and tell them also that He knew the deceit in their hearts. He asked: “What think you of Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered “David’s” because they thought the Messiah would be only a man, not the Son of God. But Jesus immediately corrects them by quoting the testimony of King David, the Prophet, concerning the rule of the Messiah and the true nature of His Sonship and the dignity He shares with His Father.
Jesus asked them, “How then doth David in spirit call him Lord saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand: until I make thy enemies thy footstool?’” (Psalm 109, KJV: 110) This tells the Pharisees and us that Jesus Christ is a son of King David, through his family line, because Christ is a man. It also tells us that Jesus is David’s Lord because Christ is God and Lord of us all. That is how the Prophet David could make such an odd-sounding statement.
To sit at the right hand of God means to abide in equality and dignity with the Father. The word “until” is used for indefinite time It’s as if to say, “Sit thou at my right hand, and let Thy enemies be forever beneath Thy feet.” Jesus tells them this so they might begin to fear Him, to stand in awe of Him. We are told in the Psalms and in Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus that, “Fear is the beginning of wisdom.” As I said earlier, “To love God with our whole heart” means “our wisdom concerns Godly things,” and this kind of Godly wisdom would lead these Pharisees to say of Jesus what Peter said, “Thou are Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16: 16) So you see that to be put beneath the feet of the Lord as His footstool lowers our standing, but if it causes us to fear him, it is also for our salvation.
Well, all this was too much for the Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading. Later on they tried to explain that David’s Lord was Abraham, but this doesn’t make sense. Read Psalm 109 (KJV 110). Abraham was not begot before the day star, nor was Abraham a priest in the order of Melchisedech. It was Melchisedech who offered bread and wine to Abraham.
Had the Pharisees asked these questions of Jesus to learn from Him, Jesus would not have put before them this question of what King David meant. But whatever wisdom they possessed was earthly wisdom, not wisdom of the things of God, and so they couldn’t answer our Lord. In fact they were brought to a halt, and from that time on no one tempted Him or tried to trick Him into blasphemy. +++
We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass
No comments:
Post a Comment