{"id":4561,"date":"2023-10-27T13:49:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T12:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=4561"},"modified":"2023-10-28T12:43:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T11:43:25","slug":"commentary-on-30th-sunday-of-the-year-a-29-10-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-30th-sunday-of-the-year-a-29-10-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 30th Sunday of the year (A), 29.10.2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/h3>\n

Mt 22:34-40<\/b><\/p>\n

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.\u00a0 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”\u00a0 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’\u00a0 This is the greatest and first commandment.\u00a0 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’\u00a0 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Commentators on the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) amplified it into many hundreds of prescriptions; but there was an equal quest to simplify it into one, to express the essence underlying its multiplicity.\u00a0 This was the import of the Pharisee’s question.\u00a0 It was a regular question to put to a rabbi.<\/p>\n

Jesus replied by quoting the ‘Shema Israel’, which is practically the Creed of Judaism.\u00a0 It was recited at Saturday evening prayers, and written on small pieces of parchment carried in phylacteries.\u00a0 The words mean ‘Hear, O Israel’, from the opening words: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.\u00a0 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).\u00a0 But he added another to it, from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”\u00a0 This was not quite an innovation in itself, but when you recall who he meant by ‘neighbour’, it certainly was.\u00a0 The common understanding of ‘neighbour’ was other Jews.\u00a0 In the time the Jesus, the most pious sect, the Qumran community, altered the definition a little: “You shall love all the children of light, and hate all the children of darkness.”\u00a0 But in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus made it clear that one’s neighbour is anyone in need, no matter what their race or religion.\u00a0 ‘Neighbour’, then, is an unlimited category in the teaching of Jesus, and as if to underline this from the beginning, the perfect model of this new liberating morality was a Samaritan.\u00a0 Samaritans were regarded by Jews as heretics and foreigners, in no way “children of the light.”<\/p>\n

The combination of the two commandments to love God and neighbour was not lost on Jesus’ disciples.\u00a0 “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20).\u00a0 But there are better examples in the New Testament of the universality of ‘neighbour’ (John tended to think only in terms of the community of disciples).\u00a0 Jesus’ teaching was that we must love even our enemies:\u00a0 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:43-45).<\/p>\n

“Love your neighbour as yourself,” Jesus quoted.\u00a0 But when he spoke from himself he said “Love one another as I have loved you<\/em>” (John 15:12).\u00a0 There is all the difference in the world between these two.\u00a0 I would run a mile from some people if they threatened to love me as they loved themselves!\u00a0 The so-called Golden Rule guarantees very little.\u00a0 Jesus not only tells us to love God and neighbour; by his life and death he shows us how to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Mt 22:34-40 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.\u00a0 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”\u00a0 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4561"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7978,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561\/revisions\/7978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}