Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Love is the fulfillment of the law. Period. End of discussion. Enough said. That’s really all we need to reflect upon today. LOVE is the fulfillment of the law. This statement from St Paul in our first reading summarizes our life in Christ. I encourage you to return to the first reading from Romans and read it slowly, prayerfully, meditatively. If you practice Lectio Divina, I invite you to engage the text in that way. Spend some time in whatever way feels right to you, reading the passage several times. Read it out loud at least once. I sense the Holy Spirit wanting to spend time with each of you, each in your own way, with this scripture. I’ll offer just a couple thoughts, praying that they become jumping off points for your own reflection and prayer.
Paul tells us, owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Our sin creates an indebtedness to God. It’s a debt we can never pay, because it’s humanly impossible to fulfill all the legal requirements of the Law. Mercifully, God sent his Son Jesus Christ to pay our debt and wipe the slate clean through his death on the Cross. Because we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection through our baptism, now our only debt is to love. We don’t owe God anything else. As we contemplate the weight of our own sin, and the extravagant gift of God’s love and mercy to us, how can we do anything else but LOVE? Love gratefully; love radically – love God radically and love every other human being radically.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus startles us with his declaration, If anyone comes to me without hating father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. A call to hate? No, not at all! Jesus over-emphasizes the point that we cannot love anything or anyone more than God. We can’t even love our striving to be obedient to the Ten Commandments and all the other legal requirements more than God. So often we confuse strict adherence to the rules with loving God. In our blindness we can become ensnared in a legal entrapment that leaves us fearful, judgmental, and condemning of others and perhaps even of ourselves. As our Lord tells us in his Gospel today, we must renounce anything that keeps us from radical love and radical discipleship.
One of my favorite hymns of the Church is “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Two of the verses begin, Oh, to grace how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness, like a fetter; bind my wandering heart to Thee. Let that metaphor sink in – what does it mean to you that God’s goodness binds your heart to God like a fetter? Today let us throw off the shackles of legalism, of striving after righteousness, of our tendency to judge and condemn. Our only indebtedness, the only thing we are bound to is LOVE. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and frees us to abide in his radical love and to offer that same love to others!
- Elizabeth Wourms