A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 4, n. 50)
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – November 5, 2006
“Love With All Your Heart”
BIBLE READINGS
Dt 6:2-6 // Heb 7:23-28 // Mk 12:28b-34
N.B. This new series of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY presents a biblico-liturgical study of the First Reading of each Sunday Mass to serve as background for a better understanding of the Gospel proclaimed in the liturgy. For a biblico-liturgical study of the Gospel for each Sunday, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
The newspaper report about the alleged dumping of five discharged hospital patients in Skid Row saddened me. According to the October 24, 2006 issue of the Fresno Bee, p. B5:
The Los Angeles Police Department has opened its first criminal investigation into the dumping of homeless people after documenting five cases Sunday in which ambulances dropped patients recently discharged from a hospital onto Skid Row. All of the patients told police they did not want to be taken downtown … Sunday’s investigation began around noon, when an LAPD sergeant noticed a patient being left in front of the Volunteers of America homeless services center. He immediately called an LAPD videographer who recorded four more ambulances arriving at the facility and leaving patients discharged from Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center. Police also recorded interviews with the patient as well as with James Frailey, a 30-year old attendant with ProCare, a private ambulance company. Frailey told police the hospital hires his company “on a regular basis” to move discharged patients from the medical center to Skid Row and that other private ambulance companies also transport patients to the area. He said the hospital appeared to have made “no prior arrangements” for the patient he transported Sunday. One patient the LAPD interviewed on the videotape, Marcus Joe Lincoln, 62, told officers he “never wanted to go” to Skid Row and asked that he be dropped off at his son’s house … John Fenton, president and CEO of Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center, denied that his hospital dumped patients.
The dumping of the homeless patients in Skid Row is a symptom of a fragmented society that has failed in its task of loving and caring for one another. Today’s situation of social ills that need healing should be confronted by the Gospel message of this Sunday: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart … Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus Christ’s assertion of the primordial importance of the twofold love-command can be understood better in the light of the Old Testament reading (Dt 6:2-6), which underlines the obligation of the people of Israel to love God with an integral, wholehearted and undivided love. According to the biblical scholar, Leslie Hoppe: “The Lord’s liberation of Israel from slavery in Egypt has forged a bond that must never be severed by Israel’s service of deities worshiped by other peoples. Israel is not to divide its loyalties … All of its energies are to be directed to the service of that one God. Some may find it odd that verse 5 commands the love of God. The love envisioned here is the kind of deep loyalty and affection that Israel owes to the God who ended its cruel bondage in Egypt. Secondly, in Deuteronomy love is virtually synonymous with obedience. The image behind this injunction is the parent/child relationship, in which love and obedience are equivalent terms. The love that Israel owes God is all encompassing. In fact, the entire Book of Deuteronomy is nothing else but a drawing out of the practical implications of verse 5. Jesus cited this verse when asked about the greatest commandment of the law …”
In citing the Deuteronomy passage, Jesus imbued it with new meaning. Harold Buetow explains: “One aspect of newness was that Jesus added another part: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (v. 31). These words, it is true, are also not new: They come from the Book of Leviticus (19:18). What is new is that Jesus went further: For him there’s an extremely intimate bond between love of neighbor and love of God. In Christian charity, people and God are not merely side by side; they are inseparably one. That idea was new. Another facet of newness was that Jesus gave a completely new interpretation of neighbor. In the time of Leviticus it meant Hebrews only. By the time of Jesus, it included resident aliens as well. For Jesus, the word has the widest meaning possible: It includes every member of the human race: He died for all of us. This was a much greater depth and breadth than ever before imagined. Jesus’ questioner, like many of his fellow scribes, was a good man whom Jesus declared to be not far from the kingdom of God. One unequivocal sign characterizes those who are not far from the kingdom: Their service of love to its two inseparable objects, God and neighbor.”
Love of God and neighbor must begin with proper love of self. In the psychological order, unless we have sufficient self-esteem, respect, and love for ourselves, we can go no further in truly loving God and neighbor. St. Francis de Sales, however, offers us a deeper insight: “What is the reason for loving ourselves? Surely because we are the image and likeness of God. And since all men and women possess this same dignity we love them as ourselves, that is, as holy and living images of the Godhead. It is as such that we belong to God through a kinship so close and a dependence so lovable that he does not hesitate to call himself our Father, and to name us his children … Just as we are the image of God, so our holy love for one another is the true image of our heavenly love for God.”
The true meaning of love of God and neighbor has been crystallized in the very life and person of Jesus, especially in his self-gift and sacrificial love on the cross. Because God, in his Son Jesus has loved us so much, we too are enabled to love. The commandments to love God and neighbor flow from the energizing, empowering love that the Lord has for us. In accepting God’ love for ourselves, our commitment to love God and neighbor is made possible in a wholehearted way.
Harold Buetow concludes: “Wholehearted loving is not a matter of 'once and for all’ and is then done with, or something that happens overnight. It has to do with being there for the other. Furthermore, without being loved it is almost impossible to love. We sometimes fear that if we offer our all, too much might be asked, something terrible demanded. Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet, in his Gitanjali tells the story of a beggar going from door to door asking for alms. He suddenly sees his celestial king approaching in a chariot, and he dreams of the king showering upon him bountiful gifts. But to his surprise, the king asks him what he has to give. After staring, confused and undecided, he finally peers into his sack of meager possessions, takes out a tiny grain of corn, and gives it to the king. Later he says, But how great my surprise when at the day’s end I emptied my bag on the floor to find a little grain of gold among the poor heap! I bitterly wept and wished that I had had the heart to give my all.”
PERSONAL REFLECTION
By Celia Guerrero
St. Stephens Martyr's Parish
Monterey Park, CA-U.S.A.
In this Sunday’s Gospel passage (Mk 12:28b-34), Jesus is having a discussion with some Sadducees. One of the scribes, after listening to Jesus’ discussion, asked Him which is the first of all the commandments. Jesus answered: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus continued: “The second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
In reviewing the commandments in Ex 20 (cf. St. Joseph New Catholic Bible Edition), I did not find a commandment that reads: “Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In Lev 19:1, however, the Lord tells Moses: “Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them: Be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” God then expounds the rules of conduct among them: “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord” (cf. Lev 19:18).
It is interesting to note that the scribe had the audacity to tell Jesus: “Well said, Master; you have said truly that He is one and that there is no other besides Him … and that to love one’s neighbor as oneself is greater than all holocausts and sacrifices.” Apparently, the scribe had not witnessed any of the miracles performed by Jesus, nor was he present to hear some of Jesus’ sermons.
The first four commandments, which here follow, all relate to the first commandment and are embodied in it:
1. I, the Lord, am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall not have other gods beside me.
2. You shall not carve idols for yourself in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God, in vain.
4. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.
Concerning the command, “Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself”, God gives Moses detailed instructions, that is, a code of conduct, which at that time, were directed to the Israelites. In reading the last six commandments in Ex 20, it becomes clear that by following these commandments, we love our neighbor as ourselves. They tell us:
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not have false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.
In Lk 10:25, a certain lawyer tests Jesus by asking him what must he do to gain eternal life. Jesus answers: “Thou shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself.” The lawyer asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus relates the story of the Good Samaritan. When he finishes the story, he asks the lawyer which of the three individuals in the story proved to be his neighbor. The lawyer answers that it is the person who took pity on the man who fell victim to the robbers. Here again is a perfect illustration of the commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In summary, the two greatest commandments are commandments of love – the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor. God’s love for us is without limit. He gave us His only begotten Son. Jesus’ love for God the Father is evident by His obedience to God the Father. Jesus gave His life to save us.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
A. What is our response to Jesus’ great command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart … You shall love your neighbor as yourself”? How do we try to put this twofold command into practice?
B. Are we capable of wholehearted love and service? If not, what do we do to improve our capacity for loving and giving?
C. Do we look to Jesus’ total self-giving upon the cross? Is our life shaped and energized by the Divine Master’s example of total self-giving and sacrificial love? Do we contemplate the Eucharist as the sacrament of love – of the One who has loved us to the end?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: We adore you, O wonderful Sacrament of the presence
of the One who loved his own “to the end”.
We thank you, O Lord,
who edifies, gathers together and gives life to the Church.
O Divine Eucharist,
flame of Christ’s love that burns on the altar of the world,
make the Church comforted by you,
even more caring in wiping away the tears of suffering
and in sustaining the efforts of all who yearn for justice and peace.
May your love triumph, now and forever.
Assembly: Jesus
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength … You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mk 12:30-31)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
A. ACTION PLAN: Pray that Jesus’ twofold love-command may truly impact and shape our daily lives. Let the words of Jesus and his Eucharistic sacrifice challenge you to love and embrace the poor and vulnerable in today’s fragmented and wounded world.
B. ACTION PLAN: To help us contemplate more deeply the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has crystallized in his very person the love of God and neighbor, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR (Vol. 2, n. 50): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US