Daily Reflection Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

I had taught literature for many years. In order to relay important messages, poets have used figures of speech. In his 116th sonnet, William Shakespeare penned, “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.” Isn’t the poet communicating the same message as Jesus in today’s gospel reading? Jesus uses the word, “hate,” as a figure of speech for us to understand that God should be the center of our thoughts and actions. We may love our family and friends deeply, but God is the beginning and end of that love. And, yes, the more we deepen our relationship with our love for God, our relationship with others deepens as well.

Perhaps, Jesus’ invitation to us today is to evaluate what and whom we love. Are they centered in God? In our tete a tete with God, let us reminisce about the people we love and the things we like. Seeking the good in others and responding likewise is building our house of relationships on solid ground.

Paul, too, today encourages us not to place parameters on love: “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.” We heed Paul’s words with the understanding that we love the people in our family, in our nation, in the Ukraine, Palestine, Israel and all other countries. Yet, we need to separate actions from the people. We love the people always, not necessarily the actions.

Wherever we get our news of the day, we are faced with various value systems. Unless we weave God into our day through prayer, we can really be rattled by a materialistic, selfish value system. Jesus is asking us to question our motivation. Why do we do the things we do? From where do our thoughts come? Why these questions? Because our actions flow from our thoughts.

Also, we want to notice that no matter what Jesus or Paul preaches to us, we are encouraged to love God as the center of our lives and spread that love to others.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove;

Oh no: it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d

--William Shakespeare