As usual, when the Pharisees ask a question of our Lord,
they got more than they bargained for.
And to some extent, we do as well get more than we bargained for
when we consecrate ourselves to God through baptism
and make our promises to him that we will believe in what he teaches
and do his holy will
and avoid everything that offends him.
We recognize that we are giving ourselves to God completely,
but we don't always see exactly what that means in practice.
We cross those bridges when we get there,
and sometimes they're hard to cross.
And that our Lord holds us to our promise
that we made at baptism,
that we renew every year at Easter and at other times.
So our Lord gave the Pharisees more than they bargained for.
They asked a question of our Lord
because the Sadducees had been unable to trip our Lord up,
and they were trying so hard to trip our Lord up.
They were trying so hard to bring him down.
They who prided themselves on being followers of God's law
and being men of God
were failing in their effort to frustrate our Lord
and to trip him up.
So the Pharisees tried once again.
And teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?
Expecting him somehow to fail,
to fail in his answer.
He gave them the answer that was always given in the Jewish law,
reflected in the summation of the law given by God to Moses,
which the Jews taught to their children.
It was the little catechism of the Jewish religion
that everyone had memorized, these words,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
And yet he didn't stop there.
The question was, what is the greatest of all the commandments?
And our Lord gave them the answer.
And that ostensibly, or at least first glance,
was the end of the answer.
But he didn't stop with the first and greatest of all the commandments.
He said, the second is like it.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
And that's the rub.
That's the more than we bargained for.
When we thought that we were promising to God
that we would serve him with all our heart and our mind
and that we would give ourselves completely to him,
to some extent we thought that that,
and I'm speaking rhetorically, we thought that, you know, that would be it.
You know, that we could put a box around what it was our Lord was expecting of us.
And this is exactly what the Pharisees had done.
They prided themselves on being the observers of the law,
of being the doctors, the teachers of the law,
of doing everything right.
They looked the right way.
They prayed the right way.
They were in the right places.
They avoided the wrong places.
They associated with the right people
and avoided associating with the wrong people.
They were not like the tax collectors,
the publicans, the prostitutes, and the sinners.
They stood above all of these people, and they were right.
They were righteous with God.
And yet, as our Lord told them in a number of different ways
and on a number of different occasions,
they bound up heavy burdens on men's backs,
but they failed to lift a finger to lift them,
to use a finger to lift those burdens themselves.
And our Lord condemned them for this reason.
And so when they asked him,
what is the first and greatest of all the commandments,
our Lord gave them two answers.
He made it clear to them that they couldn't have one without the other,
and neither can we.
It is both and, not either or.
We must love the Lord with all our heart,
with all our soul, and with all our mind,
and we must love our neighbor as ourself.
The two are connected.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments,
our Lord tells them.
And then later on, on the night before he dies,
he tells them, I give you a new commandment,
love one another as I have loved you.
And our Lord was speaking this as he gave them the Eucharist.
Before he had consummated that mystery historically upon the cross,
he gave them the Eucharist.
He gave them himself, his body, blood, soul, and divinity
as their food, as our food.
And then he offered himself on the cross and poured out his blood.
That is the way our Lord has loved them.
He has loved us, and that is the way we must love one another.
I give you a new and greater commandment.
It's not above the law.
It's not a matter of going above and beyond our duty.
This is the new commandment.
This is the meaning of the law,
that we should love one another as our Lord has loved us.
And so, when he talks about what we will be judged upon,
you know, he makes it very clear,
in the parable of the sheep and the goats,
that we will be judged according to how we treat one another.
Mother Teresa, when she would speak to people about her work
and about what the sisters did,
when she would speak to the sisters,
she would tell them always to remember those words.
You did it to me.
You did it to me.
That is the norm.
That is not something that we should reflect upon only once in a while.
That's something that we should reflect upon every day,
because that is the standard by which our Lord expects us to live.
You did it to me.
So, we get more than we bargained for,
and yet our Lord, in his wisdom and goodness,
wants to make us happy.
He wants us to be eternally happy,
eternally happy in heaven and even happy here on earth.
But the saints tell us that when we are unhappy,
it is because of one reason,
one reason and one reason only,
because there is a lack of love,
a lack of charity.
It is a lack of charity that makes us unhappy.
It's not the person next door who aggravates us.
It's not our brother or sister who is our rival sibling or whatever it might be.
It's not the source of our unhappiness.
The source of our unhappiness is a lack of love,
a lack of charity for God and for our neighbor.
And, you know, there are extremes.
And we, as I say very often, we live in a time of extremes.
And if it's not one extreme, it's the other extreme.
And so it's almost, I wouldn't say useless,
but it's almost, I wouldn't say useless,
but it's ineffective to correct one extreme without correcting the other.
Because as soon as we go from one, we tend to go to the other,
unless we are making concerted effort to be balanced
and to put God's law fully into practice.
Because it is true, on the one hand, that in the end,
the only thing that really matters is our love for God.
We have to put Him above everything else.
And even in other things,
it's God that ultimately matters.
Above all things and in all things, we must love God.
And if that is not true, then we are not working towards our salvation.
We must love God above all things and in all things.
And that means, very often, as our Lord shows us in the Gospel,
that the world is not going to love us.
And that sometimes even the members of the household of the faith
will not be happy with us.
We can't agree with everyone.
Tolerance does not mean that we should compromise our faith,
that we should speak falsehood in order to please men.
That's human respect and that's a vice.
It's not a virtue.
We have to be honest.
And ultimately, our love for one another,
our love for our enemies,
our love for those who persecute us,
our love for those who don't like us,
our love for people who are outside of the faith,
is going to depend upon our fidelity to God.
In order to do something good for them,
we should be doing something that's pleasing to God.
We should do something that is going to lift them up to God.
That's true. We must do that.
On the other hand, it would be the opposite extreme to say,
well, what really matters is that I love God
and I tell them the truth or I do the truth or whatever, and that's it.
So we deliberately create this distance between us and our enemies
or those who are outside of the faith.
And that is not what our Lord is talking about either,
because that's what the Pharisees did,
although they did it in a false way.
They built up all these birds and placed them on men's back,
and then they stood back and said,
well, you poor slobs, it's too bad that you can't live like us.
That wasn't what our Lord was saying either.
It is...
Another way of looking at this, these two extremes,
is to think about the life of virtue and what that means.
The secularists will deny that virtue really means anything.
It's just something that people have...
You know, good and bad is just things that we've agreed on.
It's a matter of convention.
And it's purely natural.
Or sometimes some, you know, some psychologists,
not all of them, will say that people are either malicious
or they're just psychologically imbalanced,
that they're either just totally bad people
or they've got a problem that just needs to be worked out on a natural level,
and then they'll be fine,
as though there is this radical separation between grace and nature.
And that's an extreme.
On the opposite extreme,
sometimes you'll hear people talk about, you know,
being supernatural rather than being natural.
That's a natural way of looking at things.
You should look at things supernaturally.
Now that's true insofar as you say it.
But sometimes people who are very devout and religious
can be focused on God
and absent-minded about their neighbor
and about the things that are truly going to lift a person up towards God.
Something that's going to contribute to their conversion.
That's why among the men that come here,
I talk a lot about courtesy.
You know, and in our world today,
courtesy is looked upon as a simple convention,
a leftover from the Middle Ages,
that is just a bunch of external manners
that really in the end don't mean anything.
That opening a door for a woman
or standing up when a priest comes into the room
or looking at your parents when they talk to you,
that these things are just useless conventions that we've invented
so that one person can dominate somebody else.
That's what people think very often.
And that can be a secular view.
And sometimes even among religious people,
we can look upon those things as,
really, I need to be focused on God.
And sometimes I even see religious people
who are so absorbed in themselves,
they won't look you in the face either
because they're too focused on whatever,
you know, their own recollection
or their own prayers.
And that's not virtuous either.
Courtesy is a part of charity.
St. Thomas Aquinas talks about things like
peace, joy, mercy,
and kindness.
Someone who loves has joy.
Someone who loves has peace within their heart.
Someone who loves is merciful.
Someone who loves is kind.
That is the fruit of supernatural charity.
That is the fruit of the grace of God.
That's not simply external manners.
You know, there is natural virtue.
People can be nice because they want something
or they can be just
because they don't want to get in trouble.
That's natural justice.
It's a virtue, but it's a natural virtue.
Or there's a natural kindness
where a person is kind because they like being,
they like people thinking that they're kind.
And they get the right reaction
when they behave in that way.
That's natural.
But someone who truly loves God
should be kind,
should be peaceful,
should be merciful,
should be joyful.
That is the fruit of grace.
And that's an awareness
that we have to have,
not only about God,
but about those we live with,
about those who are members of our family,
first of all,
and then of the household of the faith,
and as well our enemies,
those who persecute us
and those who are furthest away from the faith.
Because our Lord says,
love one another as I have loved you.
And reflect.
We ought to reflect upon the way
in which our Lord treated his apostles.
Yes, he spoke to them the truth.
Yes, he told them things they didn't want to hear
when they needed to hear it.
And his enemies.
He rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees publicly
in very harsh terms.
And yet he bore with all his sufferings.
He didn't refuse to live with anyone.
He was criticized for having dined
with the prostitutes and publicists.
And he told the Pharisees that they would be...
But, I should say,
he told the Pharisees that they,
the publicists and prostitutes,
would be entering the kingdom of God before them.
So it's a lot to reflect upon
when our Lord says this.
Because if our Lord had simply said,
love the Lord your God with your whole heart,
your whole soul,
and your whole mind,
which was ostensibly and practically
the exact answer to their question,
if he had left it at that,
we'd all be fine.
Because we could all stand around and say,
well, yes, I do love the Lord
with my whole heart, soul, and mind.
But then our Lord says,
well, that's only true
if you love your neighbor as yourself.
Because if we don't
love our neighbor as ourself,
or even beyond that,
as he tells the apostles,
his inner circle in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
love one another as I have loved you,
as I have loved you,
unless we love one another
as our Lord has loved us,
then we don't love God
with our whole heart,
our whole soul,
and our whole mind.
There is no way around it.
The two go together.
The two commandments are really part
of the same commandment.
The two are one.
Somehow, within our own hearts,
we have to work all of that out.
And make our confession
in such wise
that we grow in this way.
The extremes I've been talking about
are reflected liturgically as well.
And this should help us
to more fully appreciate
what I'm trying to talk about.
We know that when we come to Mass,
we are coming to the Holy Sacrifice
of Calvary.
It is our Lord's Sacrifice.
And our Lord becomes present
on our altars
by way of that Sacrifice
in order to feed us
with His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
And we come
as the Body of Christ
to the Sacrifice.
We come also as the people of God,
as God's Church,
His Assembly.
We come before the altar
and together,
we receive His Blood
and His Body,
His Soul,
and His Divinity
from His altar
as our food.
And so the altar
is an altar of sacrifice,
but it is also a table.
It is a table.
And we hear arguments
on both sides of the issue
that it's really an altar
and not really a table.
Or sometimes,
you know,
the modernists will tell us
it's a table
where we receive this food
together as a family,
but it's really not.
The sacrifice
is sort of pushed off to the side.
And this is also reflected
in the fact that
when we come to the altar
and receive our Lord
in the Eucharist,
we are being fed with Jesus,
His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
And our principal duty,
our principal purpose
for being here
is to worship Him,
is to adore Him,
is to give Him
the first fruits of our life.
He is everything,
and we are beggars
coming before God's altar
on bended knee
to receive Him
and His grace.
That's what we do
before anything else.
And, of course,
that gets minimized
in some of the modernist liturgies
where we come forward
simply as a community of God,
the people of God,
to be a resurrected people
as one community.
And the emphasis, of course,
is on the community.
But that goes to
very great extremes
in a modernist way.
But it would be untrue
to say that we don't come together
as a community.
We do come together
as a community.
And when we receive Jesus'
Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity
into our bodies and souls,
we are truly one.
That is the communion of saints.
We are united
in the charity of God.
Both of those realities are true.
It is both an altar
and a table.
It is both the sacrifice,
and a banquet.
It is both coming before the Lord
and adoring Him,
and being united
as the Body of Christ
and the people of God.
That is what is signified
in the Eucharist.
So we can't just have
one part of it
and not the other,
whichever way
we would prefer to have it.
Just the sacrifice
and just God alone,
or, on the other hand,
the community
and all the things
that go along with that.
We can't have
just one or the other.
We have to have
one part of it
and not the other.
We can't have
just one or the other.
We have to have
one part of it
and not the other.
We have to have
both.
And that is what
our Lord is saying
in the Gospel today.
It is not
either or.
It is both and.
And you must have
both
in order to be
My follower.
Because in the end,
that is what
our Lord has done
for us.
He came
in order to glorify
His Father.
He came
so that
through our love
for God
we would give
His Father
glory.
And His principal
reason for coming
was out of love
for His Father.
Because His Father
was not loved,
God was not loved
as He should have
been loved.
But our Lord
was not indifferent
to us.
He was not indifferent
to you
and to me
and to my neighbor
and your neighbor,
your friends,
my friends,
your enemies
and my enemies.
He wasn't indifferent
to any of us.
He loves
each and every one
of us
universally
without exception.
So He came
yes for us
and yes
for us
and yes
for us.
He came
for His Father
but that doesn't mean
He didn't come
for the rest of us.
He came
out of a distinct
and individual
love
for each
and every human
person
that was ever created
including those
who ultimately
lose their souls.
He doesn't want
anyone
to be lost.
And so
yes
I think
we get more
than we bargained for
but
in the end
you know
our Lord
was not
asking us
to serve Him.
It's a commandment.
And
in the
very end
we get more
than we bargained for
in our favor.
Yes we
may learn
as we go along
that
God expects
a lot more
from us
than we
ever realized
but
He has more
in store
for us
than we have
ever imagined.
And
if we learn
to love
we will
experience
the joy
the peace
and the mercy
of God
even now
and we will be
far happier
even in this life
than we ever imagined
ourselves
would have been
able to be
happy
without Him.
And so
thank God
that we've
gotten more
than we bargained
for
because our Lord
has loved us
as
He would like
us to love Him.
He commands us
to love Him
and not only Him
but also
our neighbors.
And so
may we
be
blessed
with
the
fruit
of
Christ
in
our
lives.