Friday 23 August 2024
St Rose of Lima | Day of penance
Ezekiel 37:1-14. Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting – Psalm 106(107):2-9. Matthew 22:34-40.
Give ourselves to love
In today’s Gospel reading, I imagine a cheeky student listening to Jesus, responding with another question: ‘If we’re loving God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind, how do we have anything left over to love our neighbour, let alone ourselves?’
How might Jesus respond to that cheeky question? First, I suspect Jesus might point out that in acting lovingly towards our neighbour we are also loving God, for they (like all things) belong to God.
However, the nerd in me also wonders if Jesus might point out that love is not something that corresponds to any conventional mathematics – it’s more like the concept of infinity. It can’t be added or subtracted, multiplied or divided, split into fractions or raised to any power – it just is.
When we talk about giving all of ourselves over to love, we really have no concept as to just how much love that is. And that’s a wonderfully extraordinary thing.
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