30th Sunday Ordinary Time October 29, 2023

Readings: Exodus 22:20-27, 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10, Matthew 22:34-40

Christianity is a very concrete and practical religion. It might be easy enough to love God but the simple test of whether we do or not is how do we love, relate to our brothers and sisters. With our blood relatives it might be reasonably easy but what of the widow, orphan and poor person spoken of in the first reading from the Book of Exodus? This Book tells us of the need to be concretely concerned – ‘if you take your neighbour’s cloak as a pledge you must return it before sunset’ etc. The early Church Fathers said that if we have plenty of clothes especially those items we never use and do not share them with the poor we are stealing from them. Strong words indeed. So loving our neighbours as ourselves means loving them as if they are members of our own family, as if they were our own. This is far from easy. How we deal with asylum seekers is a case in point.

The Good News is that Jesus is inviting us to prioritise what our faith, our religion is all about. God gave Moses the 10 commandments. By the time Jesus had appeared there were 613 laws and precepts governing every aspect of human behaviour, even to things like washing one’s hands as far as the elbows on returning from market. Most Jews were enslaved by all these. So Jesus gives priority to the two great loves. He is saying the same to us. If we love God and our neighbour as ourselves and what that means concretely, then that’s all God asks of us. But it is not easy. Yet God can ask this of us because he knows we have the capacity to do so. Is it by going to war against others that will solve the question of terrorism etc.? Jesus offers us the way of love. He asks us to do this wherever we live and with all we encounter.

       Please Note:           

   All Saints’ day Mass at 7pm. (1st November)

   All Souls’ day Mass at 7pm (2nd November)

  Weekend of 28 October & 4 November No confessions. 

  No Holy Hour & Mass(PM) on First Friday,  3rd November.

Fr. Terry