31st
Sunday in Ordinary Time B. Nov. 3, 2024
Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Hebrews
7:23-28; Mark 12:28-34
Theme:
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
On November
1st, we celebrated the solemnity of All Saints, and one day later,
on November 2nd, we commemorated All Souls. During the first
celebration, we unite ourselves with all Saints, hoping to become saints one
day. And in the second, we unite ourselves with our loved ones who have gone
before us, showing our continued love for them and hoping to see and meet them
one day when our earthly lives end. Thus, the liturgy of this Sunday Mass
teaches us what we need to do now if we want to be called the “Saints” and to
meet again our departed brothers and sisters in heaven one day. We must fear
the Lord and keep his statutes and commandments, as Moses reminds his fellow chosen
people in our first reading. In the Gospel, Jesus commands us to love God with
all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths and also love our neighbors as we
love ourselves. And the author of our second reading reminds us that Jesus saves
all those who go to God through him. Let us always go to Jesus through the
Sacraments and prayer, especially in the Eucharistic celebrations, where we
listen to him in the Scripture and receive him in the Holy Communion.
Our Gospel
passage comes immediately after the Question about the Resurrection the
Sadducees asked Jesus (12:18-27), and it precedes the two short stories: Question
about David’s Son (12:35-37) and Jesus Denouncing the Scribes (12:38-40). The dispute
between the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus is the context of today’s Gospel
story. This dispute started when Jesus drove out the people who were selling
and buying in the temple area. The chief priests and Scribes, being furious,
started organizing themselves to find ways to put Jesus to death (Mark 11:15-19).
One day, These Jewish religious leaders met Jesus in the temple area again and
questioned his authority. This means they did not believe that his authority
came from God (11:27-33). In his response, Jesus told them the parable of the
Tenants (Matthew, who recounts the same controversy, recorded three parables in
a row: the parables of the Two Sons [Mt 21:28-32], Tenants [Mt 21:33-43], and
that of the Wedding Feast [Mt 22:1-14]) in which he revealed to them that
because they do not believe in him, the kingdom of God was being taken away
from them and being given to tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners, who
believed in him and repented. The reaction of the Jewish religious leaders was
to entrap Jesus with questions so they could (1) find legal reasons to accuse
him and have him condemned and (2) they could ridicule him in public so the
Jewish population would dislike him. Like Matthew, Mark lines up a series of
three questions. The first question came from the unholy alliance of the Pharisees
and Herodians. They asked Jesus whether paying the census taxes to Ceasar was
lawful. The trap was that if Jesus said yes, it was lawful, all his fellow Jews
would turn him down; and if he said no, it was not lawful, the Herodians, who
were the collaborators of the Roman authorities, would accuse him to the Romans
and have him arrested and condemned. But Jesus defeated them in his response: “Repay
to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what belongs to God.” (Mark 12:13-17).
The second
question came from the Sadducees. They do not believe in the resurrection of
the dead. They made up a story in which a woman, by Moses’s law, ended up
marrying seven brothers because all of them died without giving her a child.
Their question to Jesus was to find out whose wife this woman would be in the
resurrection of the dead. They intended to make the belief in the resurrection
of the dead ridiculous and consequently embarrass Jesus in public. But Jesus
silenced them in his answer. Jesus demonstrated that their question is absurd
because (1) quoting the story of the Burning Bush, where God revealed to Moses
that “I am the God of Abraham, [the] God of Isaac, and [the] God of Jacob,” Jesus
showed that since Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died long ago and if they are not
living in heaven, God would have said to Moses, “I was God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob.” Instead, God says, “I am,” to mean they live in heaven. So, God is not
the God of the dead but the living. This is to confirm that there is the resurrection
of the dead. (2) The elects have eternal life in heaven, so marriage is
unnecessary (Mark 12:18-27).
The third
question came from one of the scribes, whom the Pharisees chose to represent
them according to the context of Matthew’s version. This is our Gospel story. The
objective is the same: to shame Jesus in public and have the Jewish population dislike
him.
Our Gospel
text is a narrative story. It can be structured as follows: The scribe's
question in v. 28 can be considered an introduction. Vv. 29-34a is the body of
the text. It contains two movements: (1) Jesus’ answer (vv. 29-31), and (2) the
scribe’s appreciation for Jesus’ wise answer and Jesus' comment on the scribe for
his excellent understanding (vv. 32-34a). V, 34b, the narrator’s final
comments, concludes our story and the series of trapping questions.
Mark begins
this story by mentioning that the scribes who asked Jesus the question witnessed
the previous controversies between Jesus and his predecessors (the unholy
alliance of the Pharisees and Herodians and the Sadducees) and admired how well
Jesus had answered them. Mark does not specify the nature of his admiration for
Jesus. Perhaps his esteem for Jesus is that since Jesus defeated his
predecessors and escaped their traps two times, he needs to demonstrate his ability
and come up with a complicated tripping question so as not to fail like them. His
question is this: “Which is the first of all the commandments?” (V.28).
While the
question of the scholar of the law (scribe) is to find out just the first of
all the commandments, Jesus gives him two commandments instead. He says, “The
first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Vv. 29-31). Jesus
took the first commandment from the book of Deuteronomy, the passage we heard
in our first reading. Moses presented his fellow Israelites with the
commandments, statutes, and ordinances to observe in the promised land they
were about to enter. Moses said, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our
God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your
God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole
strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Mark reworded it. He replaced “being” with
“mind,” and he added “soul.” The second commandment, the love of neighbor, is found
in Leviticus 19:18.
The scribe’s
question really means this: looking at the entire corpus of Jewish law, which
law gives coherence to all the rest? Which law from which all others flow and
draw their validity? The trap is that for all Jews, there is not one law that
can be the greatest because all laws are essential. In his answer, Jesus says,
the first commandment is the one that says, God is the only Lord and that all
people must love him with their entire heart and soul and mind and strength. For
Jesus, this law is the greatest because it gives coherence to all the rest. Every
law is meant to encourage the love of Yahweh. Their God. To this first law, Jesus
joins the second, which is the love of neighbor. Therefore, the entire corpus
of the Jewish law must encourage the love of God and the love of neighbor.
Let us try
to analyze these two greatest commandments. We start with the love of God. What
it means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. (1) The
Greek word for heart is kardia; it can be understood as the seat of
emotions or affections. So, when Jesus commands us to love God with all of our
hearts, he asks us to cultivate our affection and emotional attachment to him. (2)
The “soul” is our spiritual nature. Then, to love God with all our souls means
that we need to seek spiritual union with him, a personal relationship with
God, and intentional discipleship. (3) The “mind” (in Greek, dianoia)
is an intellectual endeavor. So, loving God with all our minds involves intellectual
knowledge. Hence, the Church encourages us to study the Bible to understand what
we believe to be true. I invite you to attend my virtual Liturgical Weekly
Bible Study on Sunday Mass readings (for more information about my Bible Study
Classes, email me at nganduleon2001@yahoo.fr.)
(4) The “strength” is omitted in Matthew’s version. It alludes to physical
energy. We should use our physical strength and energy to love our God.
Second, next
to the first commandment, Jesus adds a second one: “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” A neighbor is not just someone who lives next door. Instead,
neighbors in the biblical context include our brothers and sisters around us
and far from us who need our spiritual, emotional, material, and financial help.
Next to the love of God and neighbor, there is a third love that many of us do
not pay attention to when we read this passage. It is “as you love yourself”
attached to the love of a neighbor. The model for the love for our neighbors is
the love for ourselves. One cannot love others if the person does not love
himself or herself. To love oneself means being capable of forgiving oneself,
reconciling with oneself, and giving oneself a second chance. Once we love ourselves,
we can do the same for our neighbors.
Unlike the Pharisees,
Herodians, and Sadducees, who preceded him in this series of trapping questions
to Jesus, the scribe responds favorably and acknowledges Jesus’ wise answer. For
this, Jesus praises and tells him, “You are not far
from the kingdom of God.” (V. 34). I chose this statement of Jesus as the
theme for my reflection because it contains the main lesson our Holy Mother
Church teaches us today. For Jesus, the scribe makes one step closer to the
kingdom of God by acknowledging and understanding that all commandments must
promote and encourage the love of God and the love of neighbor. He is closer
but not yet in the kingdom of God. What remains to him to be in God’s kingdom,
then? Now, he needs to recognize that the Lord, the God of Israel, the first
commandment talks about, has come in the person of Jesus himself. Therefore, the
statement to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your souls, all your
mind, and all your strength” now means that he should love Jesus with that same
total commitment, believe in him, follow him, and start a personal relationship
with him. There is a similarity with the story of the Rich Man Mark told previously
(Mk 10:17-31). The rich man, who wanted to know what he could do to inherit
eternal life, claimed to have observed all the commandments from his youth.
Jesus loved him, as he did with the scribe of our Gospel, and told him to do
one more thing he lacked: to abandon his possessions to start a relationship
with Jesus and become his disciple. Unfortunately, he went his way sad because
he loved his wealth more than discipleship.
The Church
teaches us that knowing God’s commandments and the Church’s precepts is good;
observing them is even much better. However, when we know and observe the
commandments alone without discipleship, we are close to the kingdom of God but
not yet in. To inherit eternal life, we are called to a further step, which is
to follow Jesus and begin a personal relationship with him. It is not logical
to think that we can go to heaven by just living a good life but without a
personal relationship with Jesus. Note that in heaven, we will be in intimate
communion with Christ. So, it does not make sense that we want to go there, and
in the meantime, we reject Jesus, who is God himself, who has taken flesh and
lives among us. Thus, to love our Lord with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths
means to love Jesus, who is “God-with-us.” Failing to love Jesus like this is a
failing to observe the greatest of the commandments. And failing to keep the
greatest of the commandments is failing to inherit eternal life in the kingdom
of God.
As we want
to become saints and meet our loved ones in heaven one day (see the solemnity
of All Saints and the commemoration of All Souls we celebrated on November 1st
and 2nd,) today’s liturgy reminds us to love Jesus, who is God in
the flesh, with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and love our
neighbors as we love ourselves. Let us come to Jesus because, as our second
reading tells us, he is able to save those who approach God through him since
he lives forever to make intercession for us. Amen.
Rev. Leon Ngandu, SVD
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