How does love relate to law?
The two can seem opposed, a contrast to one another. Love is a romantic dinner for two on a
veranda overlooking the Seine. Law is a
solemn old man in a black robe, sitting behind a high podium with police
officers at his side.
The Readings for this Sunday insist that law and love, as
strange as it may seem, are ultimately united.
Without love, law is cold.
Without law, love is mere emotion.
The Readings show the unity of the Old and New Testaments in pointing to
the love of God as the highest law.
1. Our First Reading
is from the Book of Exodus:
Reading 1 Ex 22:20-26
Thus
says the LORD:
"You
shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for
you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You
shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If
ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I
will surely hear their cry.
My
wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword;
then
your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.
"If
you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people,
you
shall not act like an extortioner toward him
by
demanding interest from him.
If
you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge,
you
shall return it to him before sunset;
for
this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.
What
else has he to sleep in?
If
he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."
This excerpt is taken from the “Covenant Code,” a body of
laws consisting of Exodus 21-23. Many
scholars consider it the oldest law code in Scripture, which was later the
basis for further legal elaboration in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In the context of Exodus 19-24, the law code
of chs. 21-23 function as a set of civil laws given to Israel to govern her
national life. Most if not all of these
laws can be seen as extrapolations, developments, or applications of the
principles of the Ten Commandments, which were given first, in Exodus 20.
In the present case, the laws prohibiting the abuse of
aliens, widows, orphans, and the poor can all be seen as applications of the
seventh commandment: You Shall Not Steal (cf. CCC§2443-49). The text has in view primarily economic
offenses against these vulnerable populations.
The poor and needy have a just claim on our excess goods. Not only is it stealing to take from them
what is already in their possession, but it is also a form of stealing to
refuse to help them with our excess goods.
Failure to help the poor, when there is the opportunity to do so, is a
form of stealing from the poor.
God promises to hear the cry of the widow, the orphan, and
the poor man deprived of his cloak.
These kinds of persons are particular objects of God’s compassion and
love. Although most of the Readings will
be discussing our love for God, there
is a strong theme of God’s love for us, especially the poor among us, in this
passage. The Bible is striking in
describing God’s anger against those who take advantage of the vulnerable: My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you
with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans. God has a close relationship to the poor,
and will rise up in great anger against those who oppress them. The vigor of the language should wake us out
of our slumber. The oppressor of the
poor will face death, and the fate of those he misused will fall on his own
family.
2. The Responsorial
Psalm stresses our love for God:
Responsorial Psalm Ps 18:2-3,
3-4, 47, 51
R/ (2) I love you, Lord, my
strength.
I
love you, O LORD, my strength,
O
LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R/ I love you, Lord, my strength.
My
God, my rock of refuge,
my
shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised
be the LORD, I exclaim,
and
I am safe from my enemies.
R/ I love you, Lord, my strength.
The
LORD lives and blessed be my rock!
Extolled
be God my savior.
You
who gave great victories to your king
and
showed kindness to your anointed.
R/ I love you, Lord, my strength.
Psalm 18 is a Psalm of David, written by him to celebrate
the blessings God had bestowed on him by granting him victory in battle and in
raising him to the kingship. It is a todah psalm, that is, a psalm of
thanksgiving, expressing gratitude to God for saving David from many situations
of death. At the end of the Psalm, David
thanks God for having made him king, even over Gentile nations. The royal theme of this Psalm will be
continued in the Gospels. The point of
the Psalm in the context of this Sunday’s Readings is to show how passionately people in the Old Testament—in this case, David—could love God. Jesus’ re-affirmation of
the command to love God is in continuity with the holy men and women of the old
covenant.
Reading 2 1 Thess 1:5c-10
Brothers
and sisters:
You
know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.
And
you became imitators of us and of the Lord,
receiving
the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit,
so
that you became a model for all the believers
in
Macedonia and in Achaia.
For
from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth
not
only in Macedonia and in Achaia,
but
in every place your faith in God has gone forth,
so
that we have no need to say anything.
For
they themselves openly declare about us
what
sort of reception we had among you,
and
how you turned to God from idols
to
serve the living and true God
and
to await his Son from heaven,
whom
he raised from the dead,
Jesus,
who delivers us from the coming wrath.
One of the themes of this Second Reading is the modeling of the faith. Paul says to the Thessalonians, “you
became imitators of us and of the Lord,” and then they in turn “became a model
for all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.”
The Macedonians imitated the Thessalonians who imitated Paul who
imitated Christ. So we can see the
Christian life as a chain of imitation.
It continues down to the present day.
It is one of the blessings of being Catholic that we have the processes
of beatification and canonization. This
enables the Church to hold up for imitation the lives of the holy who have
lived within our times. This past week we were reminded of the holiness of John Paul II on his feast day (Oct 22). Pope John Paul II, along with others canonized in recent years (John XXIII, Paul VI, St. Josemaria Escriva, St. Theresa of Calcutta) were persons of the modern
world, who faced substantially the same challenges we are still facing, and
they set us an example. They show us
what following Christ looks like in the modern era. They in turn imitated saints who preceded
them, so the Church is one big network of copycats. But we need examples to imitate and
copy. Every realm of human endeavor
starts with imitation. So in music, one
begins by playing the compositions of others, and imitating the styles or
techniques of the musicians considered excellent in our own day. Only with much time do we make any unique
contribution of our own.
4. The Gospel is Matthew 22:34-40:
When
the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they
gathered together, and one of them,
a
scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"Teacher,
which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He
said to him,
"You
shall love the Lord, your God,
with
all your heart,
with
all your soul,
and
with all your mind.
This
is the greatest and the first commandment.
The
second is like it:
You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The
whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
Let’s recall where we are in the Church year. We have been working through the Gospel of
Matthew throughout Ordinary Time in Year A.
We have moved from the beginning of the Gospel all the way to Passion
Week, and now we are in Jerusalem listening to Jesus teach and debate before he
goes to his death. Last week we read
about the Pharisees and Herodians questioning him about paying taxes to
Caesar. After that, the Sadducees came
and questioned him about marriage and the resurrection—although that unit is
not read in the Year A cycle. Now, one
of the better scholars among the Pharisees tests him with a question about the
Law.
We should note that there is Davidic kingdom typology going
on in this passage. Solomon sat on his
throne in Jerusalem and was tested with hard questions from a great number of
people, most notably the Queen of Sheba, who came for that very purpose (1
Kings 4:34; 10:1). The whole scenario of
Jesus sitting in Jerusalem and impressing all comers with his divine wisdom
fulfills the image of wise King Solomon of so many centuries before. Jesus is the greater son of David, and that
concept ties in with our responsorial, Psalm 18, which was a royal Davidic
Psalm. We also recall that the Law of
Moses required the King to meditate constantly on the Law (or Torah; Deut 17:18-20) and thus become an
expert in its concepts and application.
This is what we see Jesus doing: he has brilliant insight into the
interpretation of the Torah, and a
very clear view of which laws express principals of primary hermeneutical
importance, and which are of lesser significance. He is the Davidic king who has meditated on
the Law.
Although the text says the Pharisee meant to “test” him,
this question is not asked with the same ill will as the previous questions
from the Pharisees and Sadducees. There
is not necessarily a trap here. Rabbis
debated which laws within the Torah carried
precedence, and discovering the way an individual Rabbi prioritized or ranked
the Mosaic laws gave insight into his interpretive approach or legal
system.
Jesus replies that the greatest commandment is love of God,
followed closely by love of neighbor.
Our Lord’s reply is not entirely unique: other Rabbis might have given a
similar or identical answer. In fact, in
Mark’s fuller account of this passage, the Pharisee who asks the question
agrees enthusiastically with Jesus’ response (Mark 12:28-34). Our Lord takes the first and greatest
commandment from Deut 6:4-5. This is a
famous passage known as the Shema,
which to this day is recited multiple times a day by pious Jews, similar to the
way the Our Father is recited by Christians.
The second, Love your neighbor as yourself, is taken from
the so-called “Holiness Code” of Leviticus (Lev 19:18). Many think Jesus
invented this law, but he is actually quoting from the Pentateuch.
It is a common misconception that by summarizing the Law
with the two commands of love, Jesus was somehow making the law less
challenging or demanding. That is hardly
the case. Perfectly to live out love for
God and love for neighbor is all-consuming and very challenging. It is also a common misconception that the
Pharisees had high moral standards, and Jesus criticized them for their high
standards and instead dumbed things down to a generic “niceness” to
everyone. This is also a completely
wrong view. The Pharisees did not necessarily have high moral
standards, although some among them (like the Pharisee asking this question)
were decent men. The Pharisees had
rigorous ritual standards, but
frequently low moral demands. Jesus primarily
criticizes them for (1) hypocrisy, in holding to high ritual standards but
neglecting matters of morality, or (2) using legal reasoning to create
loopholes in the moral law that allow them to evade the high demands of love of
God and love of neighbor.
By emphasizing that the whole law is summed up in the two
commands of love, Jesus does not make it easier
to fulfill the law, he makes it more challenging,
because there are no loopholes in love! If the criteria for evaluation of moral
behavior in any given situation is the imperative of love rather than some
external physical criteria, it becomes impossible to create legal ways to evade
God’s will.
Of course, love has to be properly understood. Many reduce
love to an emotion, or confuse love with “niceness.” There is an emotional component of love, and
love can express itself in being nice.
But love has to follow truth, and it is not ultimately loving to tell
people falsehoods or encourage them along a false path that will not lead to
their happiness. The difficulty arises
when we love someone who is engaging in self-destructive behavior, but does not
realize it. And when we point it
out the problem—even though we are motivated by love—they perceive us not as loving but as hostile or
narrow-minded or “traditional” or intolerant or some other category.
Let’s discuss what it means to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind. The heart (Gk. kardia) can be understood as the seat of the emotions or
affections, so loving God with the heart means cultivating our affection and
emotional attachment to him. The soul (psyche) can be understood as our spiritual nature, so loving God
with one’s whole soul is seeking spiritual union with him, the “unitive
way.” Loving God with the mind (dianoia) is an intellectual endeavor,
seeking to know God, to understand
the truth about Him, his nature, and
his creation. An anti-intellectual
spirituality would be a failure to love God with the mind. We can observe a rough analogy to the classic
three stages of the spiritual life: the purgative
involves learning to love God with the heart vs. disordered passions or
desires; the illumanitive involves
loving God with the mind, as our minds are enlightened with the knowledge of
God; and the unitive involves spiritual union, loving God with the soul.
Jesus wasn’t a lawless hippy or an anarchist
revolutionary. He respected the role of
law in human society and personal life.
He and his parents were careful to observe the laws in force at the
time, as we see from the infancy narratives in Luke. However, Jesus stressed that the law was
ordered to love, and has to be interpreted in light of love, which is more than
an emotion, but fundamentally an act of the will in which we will the good of
the person who is loved. Love needs to
be understood as an act of the will based on truth—this is where our culture
misunderstands love. In any event, Jesus
taught that law was ordered to love and had to be interpreted in light of
love. This is more than we can humanly
live up to, which is why we need to exercise faith and receive the sacraments. Through faith and the sacraments, Jesus can
fill us with his love, such that St. Paul will say:
God’s
love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been
given to us. (Rom 5:5)
Rom.
13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who
loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill,
You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are
summed up in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore
love is the fulfilling of the law.
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