31st Sunday B November 3, 2024
31st Sunday B
November 3, 2024
In today’s scriptures we hear the Shema prayer from Deuteronomy. This is part of the morning prayer of each Jewish person. "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.
When asked to give the greatest commandment Jesus quotes the Shema and adds a second command “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The first commandment concerns one’s relationship with God. When one is allowed to be alone with God it is easy to live the Shema, the people are the ones who goof it up.
Often it is hard to love neighbors, the people around me may push my buttons, they may have different values than I do, they may not live in the same way I do. The sad part of being a disciple is that we are called to love. Sometimes love is not easy. I need to choose to love. There are days when I wish to live in a monastery away from those who bug me, but even in a monastery I need to deal with others. I choose to love others.
Loving God may not mean loving God alone, but to love God I need to love others. The people God places in my life are like me, created in the image and likeness of God. I may have to choose to love. I may not like them, but I choose to love them.
Last month we began the month with the feast of St. Theresa of Lisieux. St. Theresa writes in her autobiography that she discovered her vocation was to love. There is a story that told that she put this into practice by choosing to love a member of the Carmel who she didn’t like. At her canonization the nun heard this story and said, “I never knew she felt that way.”
Sometimes I wonder if the issue with loving one’s neighbor as oneself is that we can love ourselves too much or too little. The way we interact with the world may be affected by how we look at ourselves. If we are too pumped up we can see others as being less than. If we are too down on ourselves, we can see others as above us. Too see the world with eyes of love mean seeing a God who loves me as I am. If I choose to love God and receive God’s love I may find myself as more of a lover.
I love the words of Thersa of Calcutta:
Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
Inscribed on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta.”
― Mother Teresa
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How many of you recall the following hymn refrain? Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater… It is the refrain from the hymn of the same title that was composed for the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, which Pope Francis opened in the first week of Advent in 2015 and concluded with the feast of Christ the King on November 20, 2016. You may recall that throughout that Jubilee Year, we opened our Masses with that hymn and sang that refrain. Misericordes sicut Pater… …Merciful like the Father …Merciful like the Father. How appropriate that on this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, is also the weekend in which we have laid our Holy Father Pope Francis to rest, and entrusted him to the tender, eternal mercy of God the Father. It was no coincidence that Pope Francis declared the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis believed Mercy is the primary expression and experience of God’s love for us, and Mercy is the primary expression and experience of the love that God calls us to share with each other. So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when he was ordained to the order of Bishop, he took as his episcopal motto “ miserando atque eligendo ” ( which roughly translates from Latin as “having mercy, he chose him”). It is taken from a homily written by St. Bede the Venerable, an eighth-century saint and Doctor of the Church, reflecting on the call of St. Matthew by Christ to become an apostle. St. Bede wrote, “[Jesus] saw the tax collector [Matthew] and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me .” So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when Francis was elected as Pope, he kept this episcopal motto as his papal motto. This motto expresses so simply and beautifully truths of our faith: God loves us deeply; God expresses that love to us through His mercy for us in our sinfulness; and that despite our sinfulness, God calls us . God calls us to trust and hope in God’s love for us and calls us to express the same love and mercy for one another. That call is reflected also in the Gospel account of Matthew’s call to discipleship by Jesus, which concludes with Jesus challenging the Pharisees, saying “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice'” (Mt. 9:13). Jesus challenges us in the same way. He calls the Pharisees – and us – out of ritual acts of worship and piety that are not also accompanied by acts of mercy! Jesus is clear about this. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). In his Papal Bull announcing the Extraordinary Year of Mercy, Pope Francis describes God the Father’s mercy for us as like “that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child…a “visceral” love…gush[ing] forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, no. 6). He also describes God’s Divine Mercy as a ”wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace.” (MV 2). These words bring to mind the visceral atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, when blood and water sprung forth from Christ’s side as the cleansing waters of baptism. It is that visceral sacrifice which we recall in the Divine Mercy chaplet when we pray, “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You!” It is that cleansing sacrifice that we recall when we pray in the Anima Christi prayer, “Water from the side of Christ, wash me.” And it is that same merciful cleansing in which we hope and trust, as we place all that burdens us into the waters of God’s grace, as we have done here, symbolically, in placing our Lenten stone-burdens in this fountain of Holy Water from the Easter Vigil Baptismal pool. As we contemplate God’s Divine Mercy, we place our trust and our hope in that Divine Mercy, recalling the words our late Holy Father Pope Francis left us with: “Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive” (MV 3); “Mercy [is] the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever” (MV 2). Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater…
I have long thought that the Church gives us the two Gospel passages we hear today — the account of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the account of his Passion and death — for very practical reasons: this is the last Sunday before Easter when we will celebrate Christ’s Resurrection and not everyone is able to attend and celebrate the Triduum liturgies during Holy Week. Therefore, the Church places these two critical Gospel passages together so that we hear and experience them in a regular Sunday Mass setting — literally, to ‘fit them in’ before Easter. But there is another equally, if not more, important reason we are to experience these Gospel passages together. And I honestly don’t know if the Church intends this reason or not, but I believe the Holy Spirit intends it. These two Gospel passages remind us as much as any passage that Jesus Christ, while fully Divine, is also fully human. He is like us in all manner except one, in committing sin. He therefore shares with us the experience of the full range of our humanity. In these two Gospel passages we experience Christ moving from triumph to tragedy, from soaring to suffering: the triumphant, soaring entry into Jerusalem and the suffering and tragedy of His Passion and crucifixion. Christ’s human experience is also our human experience, for do not we all experience triumph and tragedy, soaring and suffering? Therefore, we do not have a God and Savior who cannot sympathize with our human experience, but rather one who shares it with us! And we have a God and Savior who not only soared and suffered for us, but soars and suffers with us. Not just two thousand years ago, but right here, right now, in every minute of our lives. For what did Jesus promise? “I am with you always , until the end of time.” (Mt 28:20) When we soar and triumph, Jesus is with us, by our side. And when we suffer and experience tragedy, especially, Jesus is with us, by our side. We are encouraged to give thanks to God in our triumphs and soaring. And we are invited to unite our suffering with Christ’s suffering and offer it up for whatever or whomever is in need. Christ’s suffering was not pointless, and united to His, neither is ours. We offer it up, trust, and hope. Sisters and brothers, that hope comes from our knowledge of the rest of the Gospel story that we will experience with Christ: that His triumph and tragedy, His soaring and suffering does not end in death, but in the glory of Easter Resurrection.
