The Feast of St. Bartholomew, Saturday, August 24, 2024

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.”

I mistakenly thought yesterday was St. Bartholomew’s feast day and wrote a reflection for that Gospel reading.  His feast day is actually today (August 24) but I am posting a reflection on yesterday’s (August 23) Gospel Reading to make up for the omission.

“When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees.”  This event takes place after the Lord had triumphantly entered Jerusalem, and would appear to have occurred the next day, Monday.  The Lord’s various opponents are unnerved and angry due to the acclaim of those who came up with him from Galilee and were well aware of how this appeared to fulfill the messianic prophecy in Psalm 118.  They see him in the Temple courtyard and attempt to provoke and discredit him.  The Sadducees, a relatively small sect comprised mostly of the priests, thought they could show the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, held by the Pharisees and taught by the Lord, to be false with a trick question with which they had succeeded before with others.  The Lord, however, had applied the Scriptures not only to answer the question but to show their own teaching, that there was no resurrection, to be false.  The Pharisees, apparently not present for this, heard about it, and a scribe of their number decided to engage Jesus in a theological discussion for which he could not be prepared, as he had come from Galilee and had no formal training in the Law.

“Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”  The question is one which a child might be asked, and the scribe might be acting out of contempt through asking it of Jesus, but judging by the scribe’s reaction to the Lord’s answer (given in Mark 12, 32-33), it seems this was not the case.  Instead, the scribe is employing dialectic, a Greek method of reasoning which the Pharisees favored.  This begins with simple, incontrovertible facts, and proceeds to deeper questions on which opinions diverged.  Jesus gives the clear answer to the the scribe’s question: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  This is the great commandment of Almighty God given through Moses, who added, “These words which I command you this day, shall be in your heart: And you shall tell them to your children, and you shall meditate upon them sitting in your house, and walking on your journey, sleeping and rising. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be and shall move between your eyes. And you shall write them in the entry, and on the doors of your house” (Deuteronomy 6, 6-9). 

The scribe’s plan after he elicited the Lord response to his question is unknown.  We can conjecture, however, that he would have led him to those matters of the Law which the Pharisees especially held against Jesus: his supposed breaking of the Sabbath and his refusal to obey the cleansing rituals imposed by the Pharisees on the people.  But the Lord will not play this game and goes on to teach the scribe and his hearers what they needed to know themselves: “This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Now, that the love of neighbor is the second commandment is not obvious, for the command,ent to love God is found in Deuteronomy and the commandment to love one’s neighbor is given in Leviticus, amidst a number of other laws.  It is not even singled out in that context.  If the scribe had asked Jesus for the second commandment, he could have answered, “You shall have no gods before me” or “Honor your father and mother” and the scribe would have been satisfied with either.  But the Lord Jesus links love of God and love of neighbor: “the second is like it”.  There are hints in the books of the Old Law of such a connection, as in Proverbs 19, 17: “He who is merciful to the poor loams to God.  He will repay.”  The Lord’s bringing the two commandments together shows that the first is the cause of the second, and that we should love our neighbors precisely because we love God.  Likewise, if we hate our neighbors, we cannot love God.  As St. John puts it: “If anyone say: I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can he who does not love his brother whom he sees love God whom he does not see?” (1 John 4, 20). 

“The whole Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.”  So speaks the Lawgiver himself.  What we might miss here, though, is that this unlettered Galilean was saying all of this on his own authority.  He does not quote the Prophets or even other Pharisees to justify it.  This was the teaching “with authority” that aroused both admiration and condemnation of so many at the time.  Also in doing this, the Lord subtly destroyed the arguments anyone might have that he was breaking the Law by healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath (cf. Luke 13, 10-17), for instance, for if the Law depended and was described from these two commandments, healing on any day must be permitted.  In point of fact, it fulfills the law of the Sabbath, which was made for man (cf. Mark 2, 27).

The love of neighbor is at times difficult but we can carry this out by keeping in mind the love of God which he shows to us every day.