20th Week in Ordinary Time
25th August 2023 (Friday) Readings and Reflection
Psalter: Week 4
Reading of the Day
First Reading: Ruth 1:1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22
In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, “See, your sister-inlaw has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-inlaw.” But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest
Psalm 146:5-6ab, 6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R. 1b)
R/. My soul, give praise to the Lord!
Alleluia
V/. Alleluia R/. Alleluia
V/. Teach me your paths, O Lord. Guide me in your truth.
R/. Alleluia
Gospel : Matthew 22:34-40
At that time: When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Daily Gospel Reflection
Highlight: Nothing greater!
Guidlines: In a world that is often love-starving and love-hungry, love alone is the fittest and greatest response remedy to repair the damaged face of life and to resurge it with a fresh glow{alertSuccess}
1. A lawyer in the gospel asks Jesus a question, “What is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus’ answer is Love. It is double-packed: love for God and love for the neighbour. It is a love for God with the totality of the person, that is, heart and soul, and mind.
2. Therefore, we should love God with all and the fullness of our faculties. There cannot be portions or fractions, or conditions or concessions. It is to love God without measure and reserve. It means that God becomes our all and our whole.
3. This means that God becomes our topmost priority. He is not a mere abstract concept, not an idea or issue about which we have some knowledge. God is not merely an intellectual concern. God becomes a concern of life, someone very personal, someone for whom we nurture profound feeling and sentiment, someone with whom we relate passionately and intimately. Thus, God becomes a vital concern of emotion, experience, relation, and commitment.
4. This invites us then to check our frequent tendencies to make God more an object of devotions and religious activities. Instead, we must discover and experience Him as a subject who loves us and needs to be loved. As long as God is treated as an alien and pushed out of the inner circles of the heart and the territories of life, love for God will remain only shallow and fails to affect us.
5. The commandment of love will be incomplete if we close it only with love for God. It necessarily opens up to love for neighbour. Love for God never encloses itself within itself. It is not an individual affair with God.
6. Rather, love for God finds its concrete expression in love for neighbour. A love for God that does not lead one to love for neighbour is shallow and can even be a farce. This love for neighbour must be such that it loves the other as one loves his own self. In other words, in a true love of neighbour, there is no ego, no ego-interests. It is selfless.
7. In Ruth in the first reading, we find this beautiful combination of love for God and love for the other. Though a Moabitess, she owns up God and the family of the Hebrew Naomi, her mother-in-law. Even after her husband’s death, she clings to her.
8. See her words: “For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God”.
Practice: The world that feels sick, and wounded, can be healed only with the power of love. While love for God elevates our spirits to a heavenly life, love for others commits us down to the earth {alertSuccess}