Weekend Reflections for 10/23/20
This weekend in the Sunday liturgy we hear the familiar – perhaps too familiar – teaching of Jesus that love of God and love of neighbor are the “greatest” of the hundreds of laws which the Jewish people recognized as contained within the first five books of Scripture. As we well know, Jesus pushes his listeners to embrace this dual focus of love not as two separate laws but as a single commandment of love. Like the two sides of a coin, one cannot exist without the other.
I offer two sets of questions in light of this Gospel, taking into account the particular circumstances in which our world and our country now find themselves.
(1) What has living in a COVID-19 world during the past seven months taught me about what it means to love one’s neighbor? Has my sense of who is my neighbor expanded or retracted? In the spirit of Jesus, have I not only discovered new neighbors but actively sought to create neighbors among those who were previously only strangers or maybe even “enemies” in some sense?
(2) As this country finds itself on the eve of another set of elections – and as we are reminded of the privilege and obligation to exercise civic responsibility for our society’s well-being through the power of the vote – do we sense that our voting should be an act of a well-formed conscience and an act of love?
A final note: This entry is being distributed as the month of October draws to a close, the month during which Catholics, under the patronage of Mary, have been reminded in a heightened way of the ongoing challenge of respecting and defending life in all its stages and in all its “faces.” Life issues are many, among which are abortion, capital punishment, domestic violence, human trafficking, immigration, proper care of the elderly, and social (including racial) harmony. It seems to me that most “social justice” issues are also life issues, since they address the quality of human life both in the present and in the future.
Elections are by definition competitive; sadly, they are also often contentious in a way that calls into question our common love-commitment to truth, justice, life and the common good. The U.S. bishops remind us that we should participate in the political process in a manner that is worthy of our human and Christian dignity. They also state that we should analyze issues for their social and moral dimensions and should examine the positions of candidates on the full range of issues, “as well as their personal integrity, philosophy, and performance.”
In anticipation of elections, it is easy to fall into facile, black-and-white thinking. It is not so easy to bring reflection to our voting choices. It is even more difficult to do so with that true spiritual freedom which enables us, in love, to recognize and act upon the moral and ethical importance of those choices. Let us pray, through the intercession of Mary, that all of us will be granted the freedom we need.
-Fr. Frank Reale, SJ