Homily for 30th Sunday year A

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won’t you be my neighbor?

For over 30 years on public television, Mr. Rogers, a.k.a. Fred Rogers entertained and taught children about being a good neighbor. Did you know he was a Presbyterian minister?

Hopefully, many of us have benefitted from having good neighbors. It certainly enhances our quality of life when we have good neighbors. Just recently we celebrated neighbors and neighborhoods on Night Out Against Crime.

I believe many of us learned a lot about being good neighbors after Hurricane Katrina.

As people of faith, do we love our neighbor as Jesus teaches us? And who is my neighbor?

Today’s Gospel finds Jesus being questioned by a Pharisee. We may remember last week’s Gospel when Jesus was questioned by the Sadducees. Jesus’ teachings continue to draw the concern and skepticism of the religious elite and they all are trying to entrap him with his own words. Last week it concerned paying the tax with the Roman coin. This week Jesus is asked to take all the commandments in the law and name the greatest. The Pharisee was not asking Jesus to rank the Ten Commandments; he wanted Jesus to name the greatest from the 613 commandments of the law.

And Jesus never flustered answers as he sees fit and quotes two well known passages from the Torah. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind. The Pharisees would recognize this from their creed and quoted from Deuteronomy. The second part, love your neighbor as yourself, is quoted from Leviticus. By placing these two laws together in his response, Jesus teaches them, and us, that you can not separate the love of God from that of our neighbor. While they can not be separated, Jesus indeed makes clear that love of God is first and love of our fellow man a close second. Love of neighbor is firmly grounded in love of God.

And the love Jesus speaks of here is not the romantic notion of love we seem to cling to these days. This is total self-giving love; with the entire heart, soul and mind.

At this point we need to ask, who is our neighbor? Interestingly, this is not addressed in today’s Gospel. But notice the wisdom of the Church in today’s liturgy. Who is our neighbor? Let’s look at our first reading from Exodus. We see a partial list here: aliens, widows and orphans. And we could plumb the depths of Scripture to find the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized among many others.

So what does this Gospel speak to us today about our love of God and of neighbor? This Gospel is being proclaimed on World Mission Sunday. We are asked on this Sunday to be more aware of our Christian responsibilities to our neighbors across the world. How many of us respond with generous hearts and prayerful support to the requests of the missionaries. Today we have such opportunity with our special collection.

As baptized Christians, we are also missionaries. We are asked by God and through His Church, to be a missionary wherever and whenever we encounter a neighbor.

For us here in our community we respond generously to the needs of the Covington Food Bank. Even if we miss our special food drives we always have a collection bin in the back of Church. Next time we come to Mass, remembering this Gospel, can we bring some food for our neighbor? Maybe some of us here can even call and volunteer some valuable time to the food bank.

In our own neighborhoods we can demonstrate love of neighbor. Maybe there is just one neighbor where we live that needs a hand. From something as simple as cut someone’s grass, drive a neighbor to their doctor appointment, or check in on someone with your care, concern and smile. Maybe someone we know just needs a way to get to church.

Lest we forget, love God first. Unless we have been hiding under a rock we are just one short month away from beginning the new translation of the Mass; the implementation of the Roman Missal.
Our highest form of loving God is worshipping Him in the prayer that is the Mass. Are we preparing ourselves with our hearts and souls and minds to offer God love and worship? Our parish has completed three sessions on the new translations but we have three more, on the next three Tuesdays at 6 p.m. I want to personally invite all to come and prepare.

So we have some idea now how we can demonstrate that love Jesus challenges us to give; to God first and our neighbor second. It’s a beautiful day in God’s kingdom and He calls us all to be neighbors.

Would you? Could you? Won’t you? Love God and Love your neighbor!