Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Reflection
Gospel: Mt 22: 34-40
August 25, 2023 | Friday
When the Pharisees heard how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together. One of them a lawyer, questioned him to test him, “Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest?”
Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and the most important
of the commandments. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets are founded on these two commandments.”
Today’s Reflection:
The root commandment which is revealed by God at the heart of the covenant in Sinai is love. The radical commandment is henceforth the basic soul of each prescription of the laws. The Judaic legal prescriptions should always serve love at the endpoint of its enforcement. That is why Jesus goes back to the basic foundation of the covenantal relationship of God and man through the law because He wants us to take hold of its essence. If the law and its different schools of interpretation oppose love, that law should not be pursued. Jesus abolishes the interpretation of the law that kills the action of love because God cannot be seen no matter how rightful a certain law is in the scales of justice and logic. If that law makes hell on earth by being evil to the innocent and glamorizing the wicked, it should be stricken down. ./Vulnerasti, 2023
