6th Sunday Ordinary Time, 2023  - Filling In For Father Leo – by Erin O’ Leary

This weekend’s Gospel reading is from a section of the Sermon on the Mount that has a three-part teaching on living the way of Jesus.  Today’s section is on the Law, followed by prayer and religious practice and then loving and serving others.  Jesus points out that we need the law- just like we need laws and rules in society to avoid chaos.  However, Jesus also gives us the radical teaching that the law is the minimum we should do and that He expects us to go beyond the minimum in loving God and loving others.

Jesus is a living sign of God’s whole-hearted love for us.  God’s love does not hold back.  Jesus’ words and actions show us time after time that God’s love goes beyond the common expectations of what we “should” do to bring love in all ways possible.  He chose the way of love every time and we are called to do the same.

What did Jesus’ love look like?  Compassion, outreach, justice, patience, prayer, healing, understanding… all shown through relationships with others.  The law can guide us in our minimums to help us feel we are on the right track, but if we want to be on track with Jesus, we need to look for ways to do more- just as He did.

Recently, the children in Family Formation were learning about Church leaders and did an activity where they pretended to be the Pope, a Cardinal, the Archbishop and our pastor for a day.  They had to choose one important thing they’d want to do that day.  One of our littler ones said that in each of those roles, they would bring hugs and kisses to “lovey love” others. Let’s all go bring some lovey love to others- just as Jesus did!