Saving Grace

October 26: Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time:

Exodus 22:20-26; Psalm 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51; 1Thessalonians 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

Saving Grace

“O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer” (Psalm 18:2).

Jesus saves us many ways. One is by his commandment of love.

How many evils, how much suffering has been averted by the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself”? If we only knew, how fervently would we exclaim, “O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer!”

This commandment goes beyond the “shalt not” prohibitions against killing, stealing, lying and destroying marriages. If everyone just observed those, the world would be a paradise. But “Love your neighbor as yourself” is an open-ended directive to help one another in every way we can. That is a “commandment beyond all commandments.”

Since God first taught it, even though we have obeyed it so imperfectly, the effect it has had on human life is immeasurable.

And Jesus changed it. He replaced it with his “new commandment”: to ‘love one another just as I have loved you” (John 13:34). That is a commandment beyond the scope of human nature itself. The commandment to be divine; to love on the level of God.

That is the assignment to stewardship.  Every baptized Christian is consecrated and committed to be a “faithful and wise steward, whom the master set over his household” to help all in need and to address the causes that make them needy (Luke 12:42). As “stewards of his kinship,” we have the mission of managing his business—which is love.

  

PRACTICE and PRAY all day: Lord, love with me, in me, through me.