30th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Fr. Leo
When we entered school as kids, we entered a system of assignments, tests and grading. Learning was accomplished in many different ways, but the main method of learning was through assignments. We got our homework, took it home and did it. At least most of the time.
Gradually we worked through a years lessons and graduated to the next grade. We did this for years and then we entered the work place where we were again given assignments that had to be completed in a certain amount of time. At least at this point we were paid.
In today’s gospel we are given Christianity’s most important assignments. We are to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. What is different about these assignments is that there is no completion date. Till we die, and maybe beyond, we will being working on loving God and our neighbor as ourselves.
Growing in one aspect of this loving, improves the others. When we love God with our whole being, God’s ways of love and mercy becomes our own. In this experience of God’s love and mercy, our false self can die, and we can come to love others in a way we never could before. Thus our prayer life and acts of charity deepens our relationship with God, self and others.
Eventually, we realize that to love God is to love ourselves and others too. We are all one through Christ who shares the Father’s love with us in gifting with the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son. This Triune God is the ground of our being and the source of all good.
In this context, our greatest prayer is simply to invite the Holy Spirit to enter our hearts, and through us, the world. Once we invite the Holy Spirit, God’s wordless presence, His sacred energy that transformed water into wine at Canna, and manifested Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain, does the rest. Ours is the willingness to be with God. With that willingness God takes over the process of our transformation.
Salvation is from the Lord who created, redeemed, and sanctifies us in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.