October 27, 2002 -- 30th Sunday "A"

Ex 22,20-26 ; 1 Th 1,5c-10; Mt 22,34-40

H O M I L Y

In most of the cultures that have not been too much influenced by Western modern culture, the solidarity of the clan or the larger family is extremely important as a dimension of the social structure. Actually it is essential for their survival. The lifestyle of the group may be extremely frugal and simple; they may do without most of our gadgets and our luxury; but no one is in a situation of need. If anyone becomes a widow or an orphan, her/his needs are taken care of by all kinds of relationships within the family network. Likewise, the stranger has a divine right to hospitality.

All that social structure and that network of relationship is usually shattered by the sudden imposition on those people of a modern industrialized type of cities. Then misery is generated, slums appear, with the wandering of people from one city to another in search of a lesser poverty.

Something like that happened in Israel after its settling in the Promised Land. People who had shared everything during the time of their nomad existence began to establish little private empires. Economic disturbances resulted from the change from a nomad economy to an urban one where the week individual becomes more vulnerable. Strangers, widows, orphans and numerous poor were dying of hunger and no one came to their aid.

This is the context in which the preaching of some of the great prophets and their call to social justice was heard; it is also the context in which the text of Exodus we heard (1^st reading) originated.

Something similar happened several centuries later, in the time of Saint Benedict, when the stability of the Roman Empire was shattered by the invasion and the implantation in the Empire of several tribes coming from the North and the far East. It is in that context that Benedict asked his monks to receive the travelers and the poor as Christ. And saint Gregory, in his Life of Benedict, tells us of some instances when Benedict gave all the resources of the monastery -- to the last drop of oil -- to the poor.

All this provides us with a broader context in which to understand the twofold precept of love in today's gospel. We are called to love God and our neighbor with all our heart, our soul and our mind, that is, with a love that is tender and intelligent and that involves the whole being of the one who loves, and all the aspects of the life of the one who is loved.

Today, as in the time of the prophets, the time of Jesus and the time of St. Benedict, the world is undergoing radical and rapid transformations. Millions of people are migrants in foreign lands; even within the so called developed countries, people are victims of the development itself which sacrifices the weak and the small on the altar of progress, and in which misery is often greater than in the so called primitive cultures and periods.

We are called by Jesus not to a vague, sentimental feeling of sympathy towards the underprivileged; we are called to an intelligent love that engages our heart, our soul and our mind, and that addresses all the needs, material and spiritual of the little ones.

The situation is not exactly the same as in the time of the prophets, of Jesus and of Benedict. Therefore we have the responsibility to find creative new answers to new situations, in our personal lives as in our collective existence.

Let us seek in the Eucharist, the sacrament of love, the source of a deeper and truer, concrete and real love for one another; and, as a community, for those who come to us in need, and for those toward whom we may be asked to go.