Homily for Sunday, 14 July 2019

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34. 36, 37 or 19:8, 9, 10, 11; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life”? The question the lawyer asks of Jesus in our Gospel, from Luke, today sounds perfectly legitimate, right? After all, would everybody here, and at least all Christians or people of faith, not share some kind of desire to “inherit eternal life”? If anybody is here who does not hope to “inherit eternal life,” I would sincerely like to speak with you after Mass, because I cannot understand why anybody would gather to worship God in this Eucharistic celebration if we did not hope to “inherit eternal life.”

In response to the lawyer in today’s Gospel—in fact the lawyer at first answers his own question correctly—Jesus says how he, and we, might “inherit eternal life”: “Do this and you will live.” “Do this”: Act in the way the lawyer in Luke’s Gospel knows all too well, and answers correctly, that will gain him, and us, eternal life: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.”

“Do this.” Again, this sounds like a simple enough commandment by which to live; by which we are to “inherit eternal life,” right? The lawyer’s answer to Jesus’ question—“What is written in the Law? What do you read there”?—should be no surprise to us. His answer, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself,” is the combination of the two laws regarded by Jews of Jesus’ time and even to this day as the most important in the Torah. Devout Jews still pray, morning and night, a variation of the first part of Jesus’ command and the lawyer’s answer: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God; the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This prayer, the Shema, is named after its opening exhortation, “Hear, O Israel,” or “Shema, Yisrael.” It is found in our Bible, in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. The second part of the lawyer’s answer is taken from the Book of Leviticus [19:18]: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.”

So should the first part of this command, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God; the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” not be easy enough to observe, especially if we take this foremost commandment of God’s Law to heart and to prayer? Today we hear a similar commandment to “turn to the LORD [our] God with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul” in another part of Deuteronomy today (a near-repetition of Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This commandment to love or to “turn to” our God wholly is not “too far away.” “It is not in heaven… neither is it beyond the sea,” but “it is very near to us.” It is accessible to us, “in [our] mouth and in [our] heart,” so that we might observe it easily, at least in theory.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind”: This command; this invitation to go from command to prayer to action is easy to memorize by rote, but is it so easy for us to put into practice? In one sense, I think it is. Just as I do not believe we would be here to celebrate this Eucharist if we did not, in some way, want to go to heaven, to “inherit eternal life,” I do not believe (even if you are a child or a teenager to whom your parents or somebody had to insist a bit that you be at Mass today!) that any of us would be here if we did not, in some way, love God and recognize this celebration in this place as a way of expressing our love for God.

But how accessible or practical is the second part of Jesus’ commandment, spoken by the lawyer in today’s Gospel and derived from Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”? Again, in one sense, this commandment to “love our neighbour as” ourselves is very accessible and practical to us. When I am in this place to preside at Mass, I see how this commandment to “love [our] neighbour as” ourselves is lived out in many, diverse holy and fruitful ways. Many of us are ministers within our Church, as servers, ministers of holy communion, musicians, hospitality ministers, and so on. Many of us show our love of neighbour and our love of our Church through works of community service and social justice. Many of us show our love of neighbour with a simple smile or acts of kindness one or several times every day.

Love of neighbour presumes that we love ourselves; that we acknowledge ourselves and live in some way as created in God’s image and likeness. Yet how many of us here or in our world suffer with mental illnesses, including addictions, or know somebody who does? Mental illnesses, like physical or spiritual ones, do not necessarily inhibit us from loving our neighbour as Jesus invites us. The late Dutch priest and contemplative Henri Nouwen developed the term “wounded healer,” coined by the psychologist Carl Jung, to describe people who show great love of neighbour in word and action despite (or maybe because of) their own mental, physical, and spiritual afflictions, which strengthen empathy for other people in similar situations. Similarly, Pope Francis offers us the image of the Church as a “field hospital”: The ill, afflicted, and suffering so often helping the ill, afflicted, and suffering by genuine and purposeful love of neighbour, leading one another to “inherit eternal life.”

How many of us, though, suffer through difficulties with our own body image? How many of us suffer from mental (or physical or spiritual) illnesses, diagnosed or not? How many of us suffer from addictions or know somebody who does: Addictions to alcohol, drugs, pornography, and so on? To some extent, our inabilities to love ourselves as creatures in God’s image and likeness (intentional or, in many cases, not so intentional) will inhibit our ability to love our neighbour, and our inabilities to love our neighbour will eventually inhibit our ability to love God.

Besides difficulties with body image; with mental, physical, or spiritual health; with addictions, these possible barriers to loving ourselves as befits the creatures in God’s image and likeness we are, other difficulties arise with respect to love of neighbour, and ultimately love of God, which make the lawyer’s question to Jesus, his attempt “to justify himself,” all the more real and personal to us.

The lawyer, having answered Jesus’ first question correctly as to the most essential commandment of God’s Law; the most essential commandment for us to “inherit eternal life,” then asks Jesus: “And who is my neighbour”? Before we scoff at the lawyer in today’s Gospel, let us ask ourselves the lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbour”? Is my neighbour among the poor and disadvantaged? Is my neighbour an unborn child, or somebody in a crisis pregnancy situation? Is my neighbour an immigrant, a refugee, or a trafficked person, especially an undocumented migrant? Is my neighbour somebody of a non-Christian religion? Is my neighbour somebody with a mental, physical, or spiritual illness or addiction? Is my neighbour an acquaintance, a co-worker, somebody in the Church, a friend, or a family member with whom we have fallen out of regular and healthy relationship or even speaking terms? Is my neighbour an elderly person; somebody with a terminal illness or with an illness like dementia; somebody who perceives life itself to have become almost unbearable; somebody who has lost hope; somebody in great pain? Is my neighbour that Samaritan (a synonym in our Gospel today for our worst enemy conceivable) who encounters me when I am in my greatest need, at least figuratively-speaking, “half dead” on the side of the road? Is my neighbour the “half dead” person I encounter on the road?

Of course, our neighbour is all these people. Will we show neighbourly, life-giving mercy to our neighbour in all these and other vulnerable forms, then, or will we pass by her or him “on the other side” of the road? Will we or will we not choose to encounter Christ, the incarnate, fully human, visible “image of the invisible God,” in our neighbour? In his book The Holy Longing, the Oblate priest Ronald Rolheiser says that “the God of the incarnation tells us that anyone who says he or she loves an invisible God in heaven and is unwilling to deal with a visible neighbour on earth is a liar.”

“Who is my neighbour,” then? Our neighbour is anybody Jesus invites us to treat with the loving mercy befitting one created in God’s image and likeness. “Do this and [we] will live.”