17th Sunday after Pentecost – September 23, 2012
Epistle Ephesians 4: 1-6 Gospel
Matthew 22: 34-46)
St. Paul today urges us to “keep the unity of the Spirit in
the bond of peace.” The strength of this bond of peace is the Holy Spirit
Himself. He unites the young and old, men and women, poor and rich into “one
body, one spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God.” It is
popular today to believe that it doesn’t matter what you believe, if you are
good you will go to heaven. We are not
permitted to judge that any person will or will not go to heaven or hell, but we
can do and what we must do is preach “Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2: 2) Scriptures do not tell us that it
doesn’t matter what you believe. God tells us through St. Paul that there is
only one true Church. According
to the World Census of Religious
Activities (U.N. Information Center, NY, 1989, there were over 23,000 competing and often contradictory denominations
worldwide. As I have said before, we
live in an Age of Disobedience. 23,000 denominations is a far cry from the “one
body, one spirit, one Lord, one faith” that St. Paul urged us to be faithful
to.
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, this time 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 they 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?” 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 a child’s love of his parents.
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.
Let’s assume that we have spent our lives loving God and
our neighbor. Our charity has been very generous, and through a long life we
have accumulated some possessions – a house, a couple of cars, jewelry, investments
and such. God finds us acceptable, however, as St. Raphael the Archangel told
Tobias and his son, “because you were acceptable to God, it was necessary
that temptation should prove you.” (Tobit 12: 13) Our archenemy, Lucifer, finds a way to incite someone
to steal our possessions. Now, Lucifer does this not only to take away our
earthly possessions, but also to kill the good character in us. How does this
happen? We are robbed. We are victims of a thief and his assault on our
possessions. We feel a sudden burst of hatred toward the thief who is our
enemy. If we pause to reflect at this
point we will see that we have loved our possessions more than our neighbor,
because this thief, who is our enemy, is also our neighbor. Our hidden enemy,
Satan, has now won. He has won because he has killed our good character within
us. Jesus told his Apostles, “I give you a new commandment: That you love one
another, as I have loved you . . .” (John 13: 34) How did Jesus love us? He gave His life for us. He also gave us an
example of loving our enemies. As He hung dying on the cross He prayed for
them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23: 34) We are to do as Jesus did.
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. St.
John Chrysostom wrote that Jesus added the Second Commandment of His own accord
so that the Pharisees would understand that it was hatred that stirred them up
to question Him. 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. 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.
Jesus did not want to tell these Pharisees that He was
the Son of God, so He asked them such a question, that the question itself
would tell them Who He was and 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. Jesus corrects them immediately by quoting the
testimony of the Prophet King David concerning the rule of the Messiah and the
true nature of His Sonship and the dignity He shares with His Father. He asks
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 David could make such an
odd-sounding statement.
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 does not 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, king and priest, who offered bread and wine to Abram (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
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