Friday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time, August 19, 2022

Matthew 22, 34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law, tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “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. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

“When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees.”  At this point in St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph and has swept away the opposition of his enemies.  The Sadducees attempted to show him up as a fraud for teaching about the resurrection of the dead, in which they did not believe, and were humiliated.  The Pharisees reenter the struggle now. 

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  This question seems so basic that it may have been posed with the idea of following it up with successive questions in such a way as to entrap the Lord in a false position.  However, after the Lord answers their basic question, he poses a question about the Messiah which they cannot answer, thus trapping them.  Furthermore, he asks them a question which they should have asked him rather than the simple one that they did.  They had need to know of the Messiah, and they could have asked him who claimed to be the Messiah, but they did not.  The Lord exposes their gas faith before the crowd and silences them.

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  We can understand this as his explaining that we must love the Lord, our God, with all of our physical self, with all of our understanding, and with all of our spiritual self.  We reserve no part of ourselves for ourselves, but our love is so fully directed to him that we hardly notice ourselves at all.  That is to say, we know ourselves, but we know ourselves only in him, in his embrace.  To do this, we follow St. Paul’s counsel: “They who have spouses should be as if they did not; and they that weep, as though they wept not;  and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy as if they possessed not; and they that use this world, as if they used it not” (1 Corinthians 7, 29-31).  In other words, live in the world but do not become attached to it.  Naturally, we love and take care of our spouses and children, but we do so for the sake of God.

“This is the greatest and the first commandment.”  This is the foundational commandment and none approaches it in importance.  All other commandments are derived in some way from this one.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  In our minds as Christians, these two commandments go side by side, but the commandment regarding love of neighbor is tucked away deep inside the Law at Leviticus 19, 18.  The Lord picks it out, however, and declares, “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”  The Ten Commandments, for instance may be divided into those which apply to the love of God and those which apply to the love of neighbor.  The Prophets preached continuously to the people to leave aside their false idols and to worship the one true God.  They warned of dire consequences should they carry on as they were doing.  They also warned strenuously against the social injustices prevalent in those times.  They did this, urging that the fulfillment of the commandments of loving God and neighbor would prepare for the coming of their Savior.  We see in history that our God did not wait until the human race had thrown off sin before sending his Son.  His love does not depend on our response to it.  He acts as if he had made a commandment for himself obliging him to love us.