Friday in the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time, August 20, 2021

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, they gathered together.”  It frustrated and confused the Pharisees and the Sadducees that this carpenter from Nazareth had struck out on his own and had not sought to align himself with either group.  Beyond this, he had poked holes in their most important teachings and shown that these did not originate in the Law at all.  Nor could these purported teachers of Israel show anything irregular in his way of life.  No individual renegade should have withstood their combined force, and this one had, and he was gaining a large, enthusiastic following.  People even began to acclaim him as the Messiah.  But he was not one of them, and they could not control him.

“One of them, a scholar of the law, tested him by asking, ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ ”  We should note the enormous patience the Lord Jesus shows with his enemies — for they had made themselves his bitter foes.  The Lord allows them to approach him, to challenge him, and to question him.  He does not drive them away or threaten them.  He teaches.  He urges repentance.  He warns, but without malice.  He praises, when he can.  Only his concern for their salvation motivates him.  As he does with Judas, he gives them more than sufficient chances to draw back and to reconsider.  As with Judas, they will have no reason to complain at the final judgment.  With his question, this particular Pharisee is laying the foundation for an argument which he hopes will end up showing some contradiction in Jesus’s doctrine, or even some heresy.  The question might also lead to Jesus unmasking as one favoring the Pharisees, which would result in a loss of favor from his followers.  The Lord answers this very basic question on which all Jews could agree: “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.”  Here is the Son of God, the Beloved of the Father, reciting the great commandment.  It would be thrilling to hear his voice as he pronounced these words, with all his infinite love for the Father pouring through them.  At the same time, we know how limited human language is, and that it can express only so much.  He says these words here, and he shows the extent of his love for his Father as he hangs on the Cross.  In heaven, we shall know the fullness of his love for the Father and of the Father’s love for him.  It is truly a love beyond all telling.

“The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Perhaps the Lord paused before uttering this second law, allowing the power of his cry of love for the Father to echo in the hearts of his hearers that they might be moved by it.  In going further than the Pharisee had asked, the Lord seizes the initiative and also jumps ahead in the argument in order to conclude it properly: “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”  It is an impossibly wise answer.  The Mosaic Law, as anyone can see from a reading of, say, the Book of Leviticus, is a vast collection of commandments, laws, rules, prescripts, rituals, and guidance.  It is not presented in any particular form, though at times several verses at a time pertain to the same subject.  To say that the Law depended on any one of its commandments was hazardous.  The Lord attesting to the love of God and the love of neighbor as the Law’s grounding, as its cornerstone, shows a far greater understanding of it than any mere carpenter from Nazareth could have.  This surpassing wisdom indicates his divinity.

St. Mark adds in his telling of this conversation that the Pharisee praised Jesus for his answer, at which the Lord looked him in the eye and said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12, 34).  The Pharisee, who has embraced the Lord’s teaching, shows that he can change.  He can be saved.  He needs to walk just a little more, with his eyes, mind, and heart open.

The rest of the Pharisees, who had pressed forward to see what they eagerly thought would be knock-down fight between their champion and this carpenter, lost their heart altogether.  Mark tells us, “And no man after that dared ask him any more questions.”  Were the Pharisees in awe of the Lord’s wisdom or were they just a little afraid that they might be wrong?  When we study Church doctrine and the Holy Scriptures, let us gaze upon the wisdom which brings us closer and closer to the Kingdom of God.