The great commandment
At the Last Supper, Jesus said: “At this people will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another” (Jn 13:35.) He is speaking not just of any love, but the love by which he loved his disciples, that is, a love that goes to the end, that sets no conditions, that sacrifices everything if necessary for the sake of others. This is the love “with one’s whole heart and mind and soul” and as strong as, or stronger than, self-love, of which today’s Gospel speaks. This is a tremendous task that will never end. Is it this kind of love that moves us?
Reading: Ruth 1:1,3-6,14b-16,22
Once upon a time—it was back in the days when judges led Israel— there was a famine in the land. A man from Bethlehem in Judah left home to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.
Elimelech died and Naomi was left, she and her two sons. The sons took Moabite wives; the name of the first was Orpah, the second Ruth. They lived there in Moab for the next ten years. But then the two brothers, Mahlon and Kilion, died. Now the woman was left without either her young men or her husband.
One day she got herself together, she and her two daughters-in-law, to leave the country of Moab and set out for home; she had heard that God had been pleased to visit his people and give them food.
Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye; but Ruth embraced her and held on.
Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is going back home to live with her own people and gods; go with her.”
But Ruth said, “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god; where you die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me God—not even death itself is going to come between us!”
And so Naomi was back, and Ruth the foreigner with her, back from the country of Moab. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Gospel: Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: “Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
Prayer
Lord God, loving Father,
you have bound yourself to us
with strings of love
and let this love appear among us
in human form
in Jesus Christ, your Son.
Let our love,
however limited and hesitant,
reflect a bit the greatness
of the love by which you yourself love us
in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
