Gospel: August 23, 2024
(Friday)
20th Week in Ordinary Time
Psalter: Week 4 / (Green/White)
St. Rose of Lima, virgin
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 107: 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Give thanks to the Lord; his love is everlasting.
1st Reading: Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Gospel: Matthew 22: 34-40
When the Pharisees heard how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. One of them, a teacher of the Law, tried to test him with this question, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law?”
Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the most important of the commandments. But after this there is another one very similar to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole Law and the Prophets are founded on these two commandments.”
Reflection: “Two greatest commandments”
Conforming ourselves to the kingdom values is tantamount to making the love of God and love of neighbor as our moral compass. In today’s world, it is so easy to get lost—either we say that we love God but despise our neighbors or we do service for others while removing God in the equation. The love of God and the love of neighbor are inseparable. On the one hand, our love for God is the very foundation of our love for others. On the other hand, our love for God is concretized in our love for our neighbors. The Gospel for today tells of these two greatest commandments: the love of God (cf. Dt. 6:5) and the love of neighbor (cf. Lev. 19:18). The passage appears to emphasize the inseparability of these two, with the use of the Greek adjective homoia, which means “like.” The second greatest commandment is “like” the first according to Matthew’s account, which we cannot find in the account of the parallel passage in the Gospel of Mark (cf. Mk. 12:28- 34). In our faith journey, there are times when we tend to keep the two separated. If these two are kept apart, our moral compass will surely malfunction.
