LOVE BUILDS WHILE DISCRIMINATION DESTROYS
⏰Monday of the Twenty-Seventh Week of Ordinary Time 2 (08 October 2018)
📖Gal 1:6-12; Ps 111:1b-2, 7-8, 9 and 10c (R.v.5b); Luke 10:25-37
May the peace and love of Christ reign in your life in this new week and beyond. Amen.
At the beginning of this new working week, we are called to a reorientation of the value and understanding of love, especially love of God. This is because many think that they love God whereas they are actually filled with hate.
St John, in his first letter reminds us that we cannot love God genuinely if we cannot love our neighbour who we can see first (cf. 1John 4:20). Again, anyone who does not love his brother is not of God (1John 3:10).
The story of the Good Samaritan teaches a lot about the components of God’s love:
❤It has no limit – it goes beyond blood ties, tribe and other forms of closed relationship; it is a thing of the heart.
❤It does not count the cost – the Good Samaritan overlooked the danger of that road in order to show love.
❤External religiosity does not count for anything without love.
Love is an unmerited gift of God (cf. Rom 5:8) and we too are required to show that love to others without counting the law (1John 3:16). The Jews of the Galatian Church taught that before one can be saved and experience God’s love, one has to become a Jew first. That’s against the teaching of Christ with the story of the Good Samaritan.
Don’t crucify the Jews yet! Check yourself and see whether you have a modern Jew living inside of you. A man who claims to be a pastor in a Church told his younger siblings that he was ready to train them to any level insofar as they change their Church. What a love!
My sister told me how a Muslim family saved her and her family during the Kaduna religious riot of the 2000/2001. Can you do the same thing today if you see a dying boko haram member or herdsman?
Try to see the face of Christ in all that you meet on your way and then, it might not be difficult for you to love, that is if you love Christ. May God’s love reign always in our hearts and homes. Amen.
Have a lovely week ahead. Peace be with you.
