30th Sunday 2023

Most people begin to ask themselves the fundamental question  what is most important in life. What attitudes, aspirations, choices, behaviours to have a sense of a life well lived, inner peace and satisfaction? Today’s Gospel shows a man who came to Jesus with these questions. This man’s question to Jesus was driven by his ultimate confusion. In response, Jesus reduces all the commandments to the two most important: love of God and love of neighbour. It is necessary that these two basic commandments be preceded by the first, the most essential one, from which can be born the fidelity of love of God and the other human being that it is: “Listen, Israel”– -this is the first and the most important: Listen to God. Listening to God speaking to a man, revealing himself to a man and at the same time illuminating in revelation who God is , who man himself is and who every neighbour beside him is.   It is only when we really   begin listen to the voice   of God, to talk to the Lord God – and after all, that is only authentic prayer –that we begin to understand that the Face of God    is reflected in the face of every human being.                The novelty lies in the fact that these two commandments of love of God and neighbour must always be joined together, they must be inseparable. Otherwise, it may happen in a person’s life that he or she prays, receives the sacraments, crosses the threshold of the church, thinking that they are religious, but if doing good to people in need is missing, such piety is not true.                  Jesus invites all of us to know the law of God,  but always to see the faces of men and in them     the Face of God, and that in our daily life we do not separate loving God from loving a particular person.  If someone calls himself a believer and does not make an effort to truly love another human being then it is reasonable to doubt whether he really believes in God.                   If he believed, then he must accept the truth that God created every human being and, by virtue    of this, he deserves all the love and help we can give him.

In many churches today, parish communities     are celebrating the anniversary of the dedication  of  their own church, especially  where the date  of  dedication is unknown. It is wonderful to care   for this church in which the faithful gather, caring for its beauty, but it is very often the case that   the magnificence of it  as a building, does not correspond with the living church, which should be formed of the faithful who know each other, love each other, support each other, forming a living community of Christ. What is needed is to restore this church, which        is a building, but to care for it of a living community of the faithful on the foundation of this commandment of love of God and neighbour complemented by the new commandment of love   of our Lord Jesus Christ.