20210603 PERFECT LOVE AS THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF EXISTENCE
03 June, 2021, Thursday, 9th Week, Ordinary Time
First reading |
Tobit 6:10-11,7:1,9-14,8:4-9 © |
'We must pray and petition the Lord'
Raphael and Tobit entered Media and had nearly reached Ecbetana when Raphael said to the boy, ‘Brother Tobias.’ ‘Yes?’ he answered. The angel went on, ‘Tonight we shall be staying with Raguel, who is a kinsman of yours. He has a daughter called Sarah, but apart from Sarah he has no other son or daughter.’
As they entered Ecbatana, Tobias said, ‘Brother Azarias, take me at once to our brother Raguel’s.’ And he showed him the way to the house of Raguel, whom they found sitting beside his courtyard door. They greeted him first, and he replied, ‘Welcome and greetings, brothers.’ And he took them into his house. He said to his wife Edna, ‘How like my brother Tobit this young man is!’ Raguel killed a sheep from the flock, and they gave them a warm-hearted welcome.
They washed and bathed and sat down to table. Then Tobias said to Raphael, ‘Brother Azarias, will you ask Raguel to give me my sister Sarah?’ Raguel overheard the words, and said to the young man, ‘Eat and drink, and make the most of your evening; no one else has the right to take my daughter Sarah – no one but you, my brother. In any case I, for my own part, am not at liberty to give her to anyone else, since you are her next of kin. However, my boy, I must be frank with you: I have tried to find a husband for her seven times among our kinsmen, and all of them have died the first evening, on going to her room. But for the present, my boy, eat and drink; the Lord will grant you his grace and peace.’ Tobias spoke out, ‘I will not hear of eating and drinking till you have come to a decision about me.’ Raguel answered, ‘Very well. Since, as prescribed by the Book of Moses, she is given to you, heaven itself decrees she shall be yours. I therefore entrust your sister to you. From now you are her brother and she is your sister. She is given to you from today for ever. The Lord of heaven favour you tonight, my child, and grant you his grace and peace.’ Raguel called for his daughter Sarah, took her by the hand and gave her to Tobias with these words, ‘I entrust her to you; the law and the ruling recorded in the Book of Moses assign her to you as your wife. Take her; take her home to your father’s house with a good conscience. The God of heaven grant you a good journey in peace.’ Then he turned to her mother and asked her to fetch him writing paper. He drew up the marriage contract, how he gave his daughter as bride to Tobias according to the ordinance in the Law of Moses.
After this they began to eat and drink. The parents, meanwhile, had gone out and shut the door behind them. Tobias rose from the bed, and said to Sarah, ‘Get up, my sister! You and I must pray and petition our Lord to win his grace and his protection.’ She stood up, and they began praying for protection, and this was how he began:
‘You are blessed, O God of our fathers;
blessed, too, is your name
for ever and ever.
Let the heavens bless you
and all things you have made
for evermore.
It was you who created Adam,
you who created Eve his wife
to be his help and support;
and from these two the human race was born.
It was you who said,
“It is not good that the man should be alone;
let us make him a helpmate like himself.”
And so I do not take my sister
for any lustful motive;
I do it in singleness of heart.
Be kind enough to have pity on her and on me
and bring us to old age together.’
And together they said, ‘Amen, Amen’, and lay down for the night.
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 127(128):1-5 © |
O blessed are those who fear the Lord.
O blessed are those who fear the Lord
and walk in his ways!
By the labour of your hands you shall eat.
You will be happy and prosper.
O blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
in the heart of your house;
your children like shoots of the olive,
around your table.
O blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Indeed thus shall be blessed
the man who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion
all the days of your life!
O blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Gospel Acclamation | cf.Jn6:63,68 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life;
you have the message of eternal life.
Alleluia!
Or: | cf.2Tim1:10 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Our Saviour Jesus Christ abolished death
and he has proclaimed life through the Good News.
Alleluia!
Gospel | Mark 12:28-34 © |
'You are not far from the kingdom of God'
One of the scribes came up to Jesus and put a question to him, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’ The scribe said to him, ‘Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true: that he is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.’ Jesus, seeing how wisely he had spoken, said, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And after that no one dared to question him any more.
PERFECT LOVE AS THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF EXISTENCE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [Tb 6:10-11; 7:1. 9-14; 8:4-9; Ps 128:1-5; Mk 12:28-34 ]
Many of us often miss the forest for the trees. We are so preoccupied with our daily struggles in life, worldly pursuits, enticed by the pleasures of life, seeking attention and popularity, that we just drift along each day without asking the fundamental question of the meaning of existence. This is even true of people with faith in God. We observe all the laws and rituals of our religion meticulously, and often blindly, without asking what we are doing and why we are doing what we do, so much so that we just mechanically fulfill our religious duties. Then one day, we begin to ask why we are doing all these things which appear to be meaningless and a waste of time.
In the gospel, we have an honest and sincere seeker of the truth in the person of the scribe who asked our Lord, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” In other words, he was asking about the ultimate purpose of life. He must have been impressed by the Lord’s knowledge of scriptures and how He rebutted the Sadducees on the doctrine of the resurrection using the text from the Torah itself, namely, the Book of Exodus 3:6. This scribe was genuinely seeking the ultimate purpose in life, because in his tradition, there were so many laws to observe. Altogether, the Rabbinic tradition listed 613 commandments, of which 248 were positive commands and 365 prohibitions. Of course, among so many, there were more weightier laws than others. Hence, the question, among all these laws, which was the most important law. Or rather, can all these laws be summed up in one fundamental law that captures the essence of all the elaborated laws?
Jesus ingeniously enlightened the scribe on what was most fundamental in the law. If there was only one word, it is love. St Paul and St Augustine said similar things, that love is the fulfillment of the law. (Rom 13:10) St Augustine said, “love and do what you will.” So Jesus’ answer was clear and concise. “This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, you must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Instead of giving only one commandment, the Lord gave two, because both in truth are two faces of the same love. The ingenuity of our Lord was to place these two commandments found in Deuteronomy 6:5 side by side with the other commandment taken from Leviticus 19:18.
Yet in truth, the first commandment is more than just a commandment. It is the foundational creed of every Israelite and Jew, and for us all. Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is more than just a psychological analysis of the human person but it calls for a total dedication of one’s entire being. The love of God demands that we give ourselves entirely to Him simply because He is God, the Ultimate, the Life-giver, the Creator, the Deliverer. Without God, we do not exist. Our lives are dependent on His divine providence, mercy and grace. Loving God, therefore, is not just using our mind to think about Him, or feeling loving towards Him in our heart, or using our strength to worship Him and to serve Him. It is to use our entire being, body and soul to love Him and serve Him.
This explains why every Jew begins his day and his prayers with the Shema, the first word of the first commandment, “Hear!” If only we realize this, our lives would have been more orientated. Today, many have no purpose in life because they do not know their origin and their destiny. By rejecting God in their life, there is no basis for their presence in the world. Man is just placed there by chance, at random because of the atoms. He has no purpose in life, other than to just try to survive, keep alive, enjoy and then disappear.
However, the commandment to love God with our entire being must be expressed in our love for our neighbours. Because we are created in the image of God, and His essence is love, so we too are called to imitate God by loving our neighbours as we love ourselves. There is no conflict between the love of God and love of neighbor. The Old Testament prophets all speak about the close relationship between true worship of God and social justice. King David summed up the Law in Ps 15:1-5 as living a blameless life. The prophets Isaiah, Micah all insisted on the need to practise social justice and live a life of integrity. (Isa 33:15; 56:1; Mic 6:8) Even the scribe saw the importance of loving one’s neighbor, putting it above empty ritualistic worship and offering of sacrifices when he agreed with Jesus and added, “Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true: that he is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.”
And the evangelist noted, “Jesus seeing how wisely he had spoken, said, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.'” Why was he not far from the Kingdom? It was because he was a sincere seeker of truth. He was not afraid to accept the truth from someone who was not among his peers. He trusted in Jesus and saw in Him an enlightened man of God. Indeed, unless we Catholics are as courageous to inquire further into our faith, we will be far from the kingdom of God. The truly religious man asks deeply religious questions which often deal with truth, meaning, love and life. When we do not ask such fundamental questions, we will live superficially, as many of us do. We only ask them when we are confronted with life and death issues, such as a failed relationship or a tragic event.
However, he was not yet in the kingdom of God. Why? Because whilst he knew the principles of life and love, he had not yet gone deep enough to ask more soul-searching questions. In the first place, if he truly believed in the first commandment “the Lord our God is the one Lord”, what would his relationship be like towards the other nations? Would faith in this one God who is the Lord of all, mean that this God is also the God of other believers, even if they do not know Him explicitly or fully? The problem with the Jews was that they thought they were the only Chosen People of God and the rest did not deserve to be saved. It was only during the later part of Israel’s history that the prophets gradually enlightened them that Israel was meant to be the light for all the nations. (Isa 42:6f) What implications does it have for us Christians in our relationship with non-Christians, people of other faiths and even atheists and agnostics? They too are loved by God, and as St Paul says God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Tim 2:4f)
Secondly, who was his neighbor? In the story of the Good Samaritan, we found that the Jews had difficulty in extending the commandment of Leviticus 19:18 to those outside their community, or those living in their midst. They were considered to be their enemies, and therefore undeserving of their love. Their understanding of neigbour was restricted to people of their own kind. It was too narrow because for Jesus, whoever is in need is our neighbor, even our enemies. We are called to love them. (Mt 5:43-48; Lk 10:25-37) But we cannot. Only Jesus can give us the capacity to love like Him. But the young man had not yet come to full faith in the Lord.
The first reading from the Book of Tobit gives us the model of perfect love of God and neighbor in the Sacrament of marriage. It was clear that Tobias did not marry Sarah out of lust but love, and both loved each other for the sake of God. Perhaps, the other men earlier died because they wanted Sarah out of lust. St Augustine sums up so aptly when he wrote, “Let us not ask how much love we ought to spend upon our brother and how much upon God: incomparably more upon God than upon ourselves, but upon our brother as much as upon ourselves; and we love ourselves more, the more we love God. Therefore we love God and our neighbor from one and the same love; but we love God for his own sake, and ourselves and our neighbors for the sake of God.” (De Trinitate, VIII, 12 ; PL 42, 958)
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
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