30TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A (Exo 22:21-27, Ps 18, 1Thess 1:5-10, Mat 22:34-40) Love will always be the winner no matter what. Jesus won the world with love and never through a competitive spirit. All his interventions were meant to tell humankind that, “God is love”. God, through our readings today, invites us to embrace and live love. A faith that is praiseworthy is the faith in action. James 2:17 tells us that faith without works is dead. Paul praises the Church in Thessalonica, the capital city of Macedonia, for having an active faith. That means they are praised for a faith in action. Such kind of faith is possible only under the full control of the Holy Spirit. Paul admits this as he says that the Gospel went to the Thessalonians in the power of the Holy Spirit. In many passages of the Scripture, the Holy Spirit is presented as the love of the Father and the Son, the Spirit of Love, the Divine love, the expression of God’s love to believers, and the gift of Love. For God to invite us to embrace and live love, he invites us to open up to the Holy Spirit and live under his influence. The greatest sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence is that we become loving people. People of love can be seen in how they treat other persons, especially, the vulnerable and weak in society. People of love do the good to liberate and not to imprison others. Their acts of social interventions never make people worse. Using the mirror of the first reading, people filled with love (the Holy Spirit) do not oppress strangers, they do not afflict widows and orphans, they do not extort the vulnerable and they do not add salt to the injuries of people. People filled with love do not set traps like the Pharisees in the Gospel. They do not look out for a way to condemn others. Rather, they celebrate the victory, success, gifts and growth of others. The law we must live is the law of love; a law that I can easily obey once I put my life under the supreme control of the Holy Spirit. It is the law of the redeemed, the law of true citizens of heaven. It is the law of Christ and the summary of all the commandments. It is presented, through the mouth of Jesus as, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.... You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. May God fill us with his Holy Spirit so that we will become people of love.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 08:38:33 +0000
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