Roman Rite
XIII Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year A – July 2, 2017
2 Kings 4, 8-11, 14-16a; Ps 89; Rm 6.3-4.8-11; Mt 10: 37-42
Ambrosian Rite
Gen 6: 1-22; Ps 13; Gal 5: 16-25; Lk 17. 26-30.33
1) The primacy of Christ’s love – To love the neighbor in God.
The beginning of today’s Gospel: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; who loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me “(Mt 10:37) sounds incomprehensible, not to say inhuman. Also the following two verses: “Whoever does not take his own cross and follow me, is not worthy of me. Whoever has kept his life for himself, will lose it, and who will lose his life for my cause, will find it “(Mt 10, 38-39) are not easily understandable. If we reason like the Jews and the Greeks of two thousand years ago, we would consider these phrases of Christ foolish and scandalous.
Therefore, let us understand their wise rationality, taking into account what Saint Paul states: ” For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor 1: 22-25).
First, to have this understanding we have to ask Christ to send His Spirit to help us read the Scripture with the same intelligence and with the same love with which he has read “it” for his disciples on the road to Emmaus. With the light of the Sacred Scripture, Christ helped the two disciples of Emmaus to see the presence of God in the upsetting events of his condemnation and of death. Thus, the cross, which seemed to be the end of every hope, has finally been understood by them as a source of life and resurrection.
Secondly, bear in mind that the Gospel of today tells us that:
- the love for Jesus must overcome the love for father, mother and children (Mt 10, 37);
– the cross forms part of the sequelae of Jesus (Mt 10:38);
– it is necessary to lose life to be able to possess it (Mt 10, 39):
– Jesus identifies himself with the missionary and the disciple (Mt 10, 40-41)
– the smallest gesture (for example, offering a glass of water) done for the littlest of the little ones gets the greatest reward: Christ himself.
In the light of this, we can understand that the love for Christ is not antagonistic to love for our dear ones. Jesus does not ask to love them but to love them in Him.
To put it briefly: Christ tells not to prefer to God what God gives. Let’s look, for example, to the testimony of Abraham, to whom it was commanded to kill his only son. Abraham, between his son and God, chose God. “Therefore, even what the Lord gives you as the greatest thing, you must give to the One who gave it to you. And when God wants to take it away from you, do not break down, for you should love God for free. What better prize can we obtain than God himself? “(St. Augustine, Speech no 2, 4). With his alliance God “gave back” to Abraham his son. In fact, only referring to Him our human ties and affections find foundation and protection.
The Redeemer, who heals and sanctifies human love, elevates it in his heart. Giving the first place to the love for Him, our relationships are converted, healed and made true.
In the Paschal Cross, of death and resurrection, everything is reborn sanctified, even love between father and son, husband and wife. The primacy required by the Lord is the guarantor of every relationship freed from any idolatrous deviation: only God is God.
2) The Primacy of Christ’s Love in the family.
When the Messiah says that He must be loved by us more than our father and our mother, does not mean to erase the fourth commandment, which is the first great commandment towards people. We must not even think that, after doing the miracle for the newlyweds of Cana, after having consecrated the conjugal relationship between man and woman, after having resurrected the son of a widow and the daughter of a centurion returning them to family life, the Lord asks us to eradicate us from our loved ones.
Indeed, when the Redeemer affirms the primacy of faith and love for God, he does not find a comparison more significant than family affections.
The command to put family ties in the obedience of faith and of the covenant with the Lord does not mortify them. On the contrary, it protects them, releases them from selfishness, guarding them from degradation, and saves them for the life that does not die.
“When family affairs are converted to the witness of the Gospel, they become capable of unthinkable things that make us aware of the works of God, the works that He does in history like those that Jesus did for the men, the women and the children whom he met. A single smile miraculously ripped from the desperation of an abandoned child who begins to live, explains God’s action in the world more than a thousand theological treatises. One man and one woman, capable of risking and sacrificing for the son of others and not only for their own, explain to us things of love that many scientists do not understand any more. And, where these family affections are, there arise these gestures from the heart that are more eloquent than words. The gesture of love….. This makes us think “(Pope Francis).
Finally, besides asking us to love our dear ones in God, that is to live love in Love, in the today’s Gospel Christ teaches us that in order to do a gesture of love little is enough: “Whoever will have given just a glass of fresh water to one of these little ones, because he is my disciple, in truth I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” Every gesture of love and welcome, even the simpler, the less demanding, the one that apparently does not count, is not rated along the parameters of modern economy, utility, and performance, in the same way as that of a glass of water given to those who ask for it, if done with love and for love, will not lose his reward in front of God
3) The Primacy of Love in the Consecrated Virgins.
The teaching of Christ that is presented in today’s Gospel, can be summarized as follows:
1) If we love giving primacy to God nothing can separate us;
2) Everything has meaning in love when God is in the first place, even a glass of water.
At this point, it is right to propose the consecrated virgins as special witnesses of this primacy to be given to God. Theirs is the privileged testimony of a constant search of God, of a unique and indivisible love for Christ, and of absolute dedication to the growth of his kingdom. Without this concrete sign of consecrated virginity, the fire of charity that animates the whole church would risk to cool down, and the paradox of the gospel of the cross would run the risk of softening. These women bear witness that virginity allows a happy and true life, made of simplicity and humility, spontaneity and tenaciousness, gentleness and fortitude in the certainty of a faith industrious in charity.
To a humanity lost because of no real points of reference, the consecrated virgins, united with the love of God, are witnesses that vital adherence to their aim, that is to the living God, has truly unified and open, by integrating all its faculties, the purification of their thoughts, the spiritualization of their senses, the depth and the perseverance of their life in God.
In short, they witness, in a luminous and singular form, that the world can be transfigured and offered to God in the spirit of the beatitudes.