Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

July 9, 2022

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.9.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as we ponder together one of the Gospel’s most famous passages.

* A lawyer asks Jesus one of the most important questions a man or woman, a boy or a girl, can: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What do I have to do, in other words, to get to heaven? We don’t get to heaven simply by being born. We don’t get to heaven simply by being reborn in baptism as a child (unless we also die in that state). We don’t get to heaven by coasting there. It’s a choice, or more precisely, a series of choices, and the most important ones we’ll ever make. It’s precisely a choice to love.

* Jesus questioned the lawyer what he himself thought the answer was to his own question, and the lawyer gave what Jesus admitted was the right response. Putting together two parts of what God had revealed in the Old Testament, the lawyer said that to inherit eternal life we must love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind (Deut 6:5) and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Lev 19:18). On these two commandments, or better, this two-fold commandment, Jesus himself said elsewhere, “hang all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:40). This two-fold commandment is a summary, in other words, of the entire Old Testament, which is all about God’s love for us and about how he calls us to love each other. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Jesus said, “Do this and you will live.” The whole Old Testament was God’s revelation to help his people enter into life and be prepared through love to embrace “life to the full” (Jn 10:10) when it finally was revealed in the person, words and deeds of Jesus.

* But as conceptually simple as Jesus’ answer is, there are obviously practical considerations. The scholar of the law, however, didn’t ask Jesus for help putting the love of God with one-hundred percent of our mind, heart, soul and strength, as well as one-hundred percent of our time, talents, and wallets, into practice. Instead, he asked him to make concrete how he was to love his neighbor, by querying, “Who is my neighbor?” We’ve heard Jesus’ answer so many times that to us the answer might seem obvious, but it wasn’t at the time of the lawyer. In fact the question of who is one’s neighbor was one of the most discussed and controversial debates among Israelites. A typical Jew was raised with an attitude to which Jesus referred in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” (Mt 5:43). Therefore, if one were to love one’s neighbor and detest one’s enemy, it was crucial to determine who was one’s neighbor and who was one’s adversary. Almost all Jews admitted that one’s neighbor extended beyond one’s family or those who lived physically proximate. Most interpreters considered that one’s neighbor included all fellow Israelites and those gentiles who adhered to the Mosaic law. But no one was quite prepared for Jesus’ answer, which he gave in the form of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He basically said that everyone is in our neighborhood — even those considered enemies, as Jews and Samaritans deemed each other.

* In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus stressed that God’s love had no limits and that likewise there be no limitto our love ...