Following Jesus in Heart

​Dominica Quinta Post Pentecosten [Fifth Sunday after Pentecost]: July 14, 2019
Delivered by Most Reverend Roger LaRade, O.F.A.
Beloved Disciple Catholic Church, Toronto
© 2019 Roger LaRade
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1 Peter 3, 8 – 15; Matthew 5, 20 – 24
 
The Gospel passage today is taken from the second part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This was the occasion when Jesus gave his “first extensive block of teaching”.[1] In the first part of the Sermon, we are introduced to the beatitudes. These “proclaim as happy the poor in spirit (those whose condition demands total trust in God), the sorrowing, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (those whose central task in life is the fulfillment of God’s will)…a blessing is pronounced upon the merciful, the honest, the agents of peace, and those who suffer on account of their search for righteousness.[2]
 
Today’s Gospel reading needs to be understood in this context, and this context is that of Jesus laying out his platform, if you will. Jesus is instructing his chosen disciples and the larger crowd, and therefore all his future followers, as to what it means to live our lives as Christians. Today, the readings of the Mass issue a challenge to all followers of Jesus: to love our neighbour. And, ‘our neighbour’ is everyone. ‘Our neighbour’ is the people we live with, the people we are closest to. Yes, it is the people who live next door. Our neighbour is also the individual we don’t know but which we encounter. ‘Our neighbour’ is the street person we pass by every day. ‘Our neighbour’ also has a collective meaning; those populations which are suffering the most in our day. All this is ‘our neighbour’.
 
As the Gospel reading begins, Jesus demands that his “disciples surpass the scribes and Pharisees in seeking righteousness; otherwise they cannot enter God’s kingdom.”[3] The following of Jesus is not about simply following of rules and obligations; it is about love of God which shows itself in love of neighbour. The following of Jesus is a disposition of the heart; it is an attitude to life. Saint Peter describes it in the first reading for this Mass as being “compassionate, loving one another, merciful, humble.” Saint Peter tells us that it shows itself in the following behaviours: “Do not return evil for evil, or insult for insult, but on the contrary, return a blessing…seek peace, and follow it.” There is no getting around the centrality of this message when we consider what it means for each one of us to follow Jesus as a Christian.
 
This can all seem pretty overwhelming.
 
As Catholics, we are Baptized once and we are Confirmed in the Holy Spirit once. These two Sacraments bring us into the community of God’s love for the world. But, the other Sacrament of God’s love, that of our communion to the Body and Blood of Christ, we can receive often. It is this Sacrament of the Eucharist which forms us and sustains us in communion with God and with our neighbour. It is this Sacrament which gives us pause to consider our actions towards others. It is this Sacrament of God Infinite Love which engenders in us the love of God, and grows in us the hope and the resolve to love our neighbor, to be, ourselves, mediators of Infinite Love.
 
These Sundays since Pentecost we have experienced Jesus as embodying the love of God for us: an all-welcoming, all-embracing love; an unconditional love; that love which is God. Since Pentecost we have celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, that of the Holy Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. We have been reminded therefore that our sustenance as Christians is in our communion with the love of God in the Sacrifice of Jesus. The time since Pentecost also has presented us with one of the primary Catholic symbolizations of God’s love, that of the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. And we have celebrated our Patronal Feast of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, God’s Love ever-present to us in the Eucharist.
 
St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan theologian and Guardian-General whose feast we commemorate today, when reflecting on the love of God shown in the pierced heart of Jesus asks the question: “Who is there who would not love One so loving?”[4] “Who is there who would not love One so loving?” In this question of St. Bonaventure we found the key to our Christian faith. We find in God, through the incarnation, death and Resurrection of Jesus, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit, a love which surpasses all understanding, a love which transcends the bounds of our human love, we find Infinite Love. We find in it, a love which draws us into Love. It is through this Love that we are called to love of ‘our neighbour’. It is God’s loving initiative toward us which calls us forth to love in return: to love God and to love ‘our neighbour’.
 
Let us pray for one another, that through our communion in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the love of God may deepen in our hearts, that it may motivate all our actions, that it may engender in us love of ‘our neighbour’. Amen.
 


[1] Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., Matthew in The Collegeville Bible Commentary, Dianne Bergant, C.S.A. and Robert J. Karris, O.F.M., editors (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1989), p. 869.

[2] Ibid., p. 870.

[3] Ibid., p. 870.

[4] Ibid., p. 39.