XXX SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

The hinges of Christian life

Readings: Ex 22:21-27; 1 Thess 1:5-10; Mt 22:34-40

Pharisaic Judaism, in its Hillelite current, admitted both the possibility of a hierarchy of prescriptions, distinguishing them into “light” and “weighty” (Mt 5:19; 23:23), and the possibility of summarizing the entire Law into a single “great commandment” (“kelal gadol”). In today’s Gospel (Mt 22:34-40), the Pharisees pose the question to Jesus as to what, in his view, was the “kelal gadol”. Jesus replies by quoting the commandment of the “Shema”, the “Hear, O Israel” of Deut 6:5, which enjoined love toward God, merely replacing “with all your strength” of its text with the phrase “with all your mind” (“dianoia”). Up to this point, a position unassailable by the Pharisees. But Jesus immediately goes further, stating that there is “a second commandment like the first” (22:39), that of loving one’s neighbor as oneself. On these two commandments “hang” (22:40: “krematai” implies the Hebrew “telujim”) not only the Torah, but also all the prophets, just as two hinges support a door. “The association of the two commandments of love… is a gospel datum without parallels in Judaism, except in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a work suspected of Christian interpolations” (A. Mello).

The reminder of today’s Readings is extremely important in the current religious situation, where faith is often lived in a privatized and intimistic manner, often reduced to worship and liturgy, and does not become an orthopraxis that transforms our social, economic, and political relationships. Yet the first Reading (Ex 22:20-26) reminds us how concretely God wishes to be loved in humanity: in the “foreigner”—we would say today in the “non-EU citizen”, in the “immigrant”—who must not be mistreated but welcomed; in the “widow” and the “orphan”, symbols of all those oppressed by political systems that do not protect the weakest and the least; in ensuring that our economy does not prosper on the backs of the needy, but rather shares in solidarity with them (“to the needy… you shall not charge him any interest”!); in the complete remission of the debt of the poor (“if you take your neighbor’s cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun sets”), as so often asked in vain by recent Pontiffs. Only in this way will we be, as the second Reading tells us (1 Thess 5:10), “imitators of the Lord”, of that God who “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).

The Eucharist is the celebration of the Son’s existence as a total offering out of love, which strongly calls us to also become agapic love for our brothers and sisters, service, oblation, communion, shared participation. John Chrysostom said: “Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Do not neglect him when he is naked… He who said: «This is my body», is the same who said: «You saw me hungry and did not feed me», and «Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did to me»”. Cardinal Poletto affirmed: “If the Eucharist were understood and lived in its fundamental value for Christian life…, even the great challenge of peace and social justice…, if embraced, would lead humanity to become a true family of the children of God. This challenge can be overcome precisely with that «surplus» of courage in love toward others that believers receive from participating in the Eucharistic mystery, because it brings each of us into the dynamics of the Lord’s Passover, who demonstrated to us, dying on the cross, that «no one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends» (Jn 15:13)”.”