A Complete and Luminous Love: The Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

                                                   A Complete and Luminous Love:

The Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

November 3, 2024

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Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Psalm 18; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 12:28-34

 

Jesus punctuates the teachings of Moses in the great Hebrew Shema, which is “Listen, O Israel. Hear the commandments of God.” The first lesson is that you shall love God with your entire being, and then Jesus makes visible what was always embedded in the first commandment – that we shall love our neighbor as ourselves. We cannot profess to love God if we do not have respect, care, or honor for our neighbor. With all the anger in the world, we have a lot of work to do. 

 

Pope Francis concluded the Synod with titled his latest publication “He loved us.” The Synod is a methodology to recognize and honor Christians in other parts of the world and to regard them as equal in dignity. It is based on the divine love from the Sacred Heart that is needed for building a better world, one marked by fraternity, dialogue and respect. The Pope uses pastoral and poetic language to reach a new generation of believers capable of overcoming the temptations of modern society and technology while speaking from the heart. 

 

Both Moses and Jesus knew the first part of this commandment was the most difficult. One must be able to hear, and it sounds far too simple, but it is a great reason for our loneliness and disconnectedness. I think back on a routine day this week when I wanted to share some minor news with a friend. As I began to speak, the person spoke over me and then peppered me with questions so he could understand on his own terms leaving me uninterested in telling my story. I stopped trying to answer the bothersome questions because I was pushed aside. The person did not intend to distance me from him, but I felt dismissed, and I felt lonely that I could not easily share some good news with someone. The point of this example is that we do this to too many people too often. All I wanted was to be heard. People want to speak and be heard, and few people want to listen. People do not feel as if they are connecting anymore, and it stems from not being able to listen, to hear, to behold the person who is trying to speak. We get cut off too many times, which increases our loneliness. We try to love, and we do not know how to do it. Much of this is embedded in the long, slow, patient, hard work of the Synod, and at the root of it is the love contained in the encyclical.

 

Hearing must be preceded by two aspects. First, one must adopt a mindset of listening; one must have an attitude to patiently hear the other person. Second, the hearer must breathe deeply and measured, so one can listen to understand, to listen without reacting, to listen without rushing to speak. We must consider that it is the ears that hear, and it is the brain that listens. To hear is the physical means that enables perception; to listen is to give attention to what is perceived. When we listen to another person, we must give attention to more than words. We must attend to the emotions, the intention, and the meaning that the person is trying to express. We must receive it, all the while, we are experiencing feelings and having thoughts. We need the capacity to put our thoughts away to give sufficient attention. It means listening, not just with ears, but with our eyes, heart, and mind. These are all the attributes listed in the Shema. We are to love our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and when we love our neighbor, it is because we are giving sufficient attention to them with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. This is demanding work, but it is proof of our love for God. 

 

Hearing and listening one another can heal life’s fractured relationships and restore a sacred connection that is borne from love of God. It is this love that brings about a just, solidary world. Pope Francis appeals to us to build a new civilization of love with a humanitarian and missionary spirit. In our deepest core, we were made to love and to be loved. Hear again the cry of Jesus because it is all about love, and that’s what we each want. With this love, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be.

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Philippians 2) If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.

 

Tuesday: (Philippians 2) Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness

 

Wednesday: (Philippians 2) For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work. Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent.

 

Thursday: (Philippians 3) We are the circumcision, we who worship through the Spirit of God, who boast in Christ Jesus and do not put our confidence in flesh, although I myself have grounds for confidence even in the flesh.

 

Friday (Philippians 3) Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us. For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.

 

Saturday (Ezekiel 4) The angel brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east.

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Luke 14) When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.

 

Tuesday: (Luke 14) A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves.

 

Wednesday (Luke 14) Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? 

 

Thursday (Luke 15) What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy.

 

Friday (Luke 16) A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’

 

Saturday (John 2) Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there.

 

Saints of the Week

 

November 3: Rupert Mayer, S.J., priest (1876-1945), resisted the Nazi government and died while saying Mass of a stroke. In 1937, he was placed in protective custody and was eventually released when he agreed that he would no longer preach.

 

November 3: Martin de Porres, religious (1579-1639) was a Peruvian born of a Spanish knight and a Panamanian Indian woman. Because he was not pure blood, he lost many privileges in the ruling classes. He became a Dominican and served the community in many menial jobs. He was known for tending to the sick and poor and for maintaining a rigorous prayer life.

 

November 4: Charles Borromeo, bishop (1538-1584), was made Bishop of Milan at age 22. He was the nephew of Pope Pius IV. He was a leading Archbishop in the Catholic Reformation that followed the Council of Trent. During a plague epidemic, Borromeo visited the hardest hit areas so he could provide pastoral care to the sick.

 

November 5: All Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus are remembered by Jesuits on their particularized liturgical calendar. We remember not only the major saints on the calendar, but also those who are in the canonization process and hold the title of Blessed. We pray for all souls of deceased Jesuits in our province during the month by using our necrology (listing of the dead.)

 

November 9: The dedication of Rome's Lateran Basilica was done by Pope Sylvester I in 324 as the pope's local parish as the bishop of Rome. It was originally called the Most Holy Savior and was built on the property donated by the Laterani family. It is named John Lateran because the baptistry was named after St. John. Throughout the centuries, it was attacked by barbarians, suffered damage from earthquakes and fires, and provided residence for popes. In the 16th century, it went through Baroque renovations. 

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• November 3, 1614. Dutch pirates failed to capture the vessel in which the right arm of Francis Xavier was being brought to Rome. 
• November 4, 1768. On the feast of St Charles, patron of Charles III, King of Spain, the people of Madrid asked for the recall of the Jesuits who had been banished from Spain nineteen months earlier. Irritated by this demand, the king drove the Archbishop of Toledo and his Vicar General into exile as instigators of the movement. 
• November 5, 1660. The death of Alexander de Rhodes, one of the most effective Jesuit missionaries of all time. A native of France, he arrived in what is now Vietnam in 1625. 
• November 6, 1789. Fr. John Carroll of Maryland was appointed to be the first Bishop of Baltimore. 
• November 7, 1717. The death of Antonio Baldinucci, an itinerant preacher to the inhabitants of the Italian countryside near Rome. 
• November 8, 1769. In Spain, Charles III ordered all of the Society's goods to be sold and sent a peremptory demand to the newly elected Pope Clement XIV to have the Society suppressed. 
• November 9, 1646. In England, Fr. Edmund Neville died after nine months imprisonment and ill-treatment. An heir to large estates in Westmoreland, he was educated in the English College and spent forty years working in England.