Friday of the 20th Week in ordinary Time

“The Entire Law and the Prophets Depends on This”

The prophecy from Ezekiel 37 in today’s first reading is probably the most well-known of that book and perhaps of all the prophets- the “dry bones” prophecy. It is also a very good example of how prophecy, by its very nature, is something that is both obvious and elusive. For the original audience of ancient Israel, it was a hopeful prophecy that despite their captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, God would raise the chosen people up again. For Christians, it seems an unmistakable prophecy of the resurrection, the Lord’s and our own. But there are other, perhaps more personal, levels within it that are possible. 2Pt 1:20 famously states, “That no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.” Although it’s also not exactly clear what prophecy the second letter of Peter is referring to here, it seems clear enough that true prophecy comes only from the Holy Spirit and nowhere else. And when God “speaks,” our understanding very much depends on how well we are listening, on how aware we are of God’s very mysterious presence always remembering Jn 1:18, “No one has ever seen God.” What does this prophecy say about the dry and seemingly dead “bones” within us? Do we believe Jesus when he said, “With God, all things are possible.” Do we believe it’s possible that, in the words of Eph 4:23, “Your inmost being must be renewed.” For prophecies never lose their prophetic power if we stop assuming we know to whom they are directed. As the prophet Nathan so devastatingly told David, who also assumed otherwise, “You are the man!” 2Sam 12:7

Jesus spends the entirety of chapter 22 of Matthew, where our Gospel passage comes from today, telling parables directed at the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Chief Priests, who composed the entire religious authority of Israel of his day. They will, all of them, completely and deliberately hear nothing from them. For they are not interested in truth but only themselves and holding onto what they believe is theirs. They hear only what they want to hear. In chapter 23 Jesus will pronounce his seven woes to them, not a curse but simply a terrible and damning truth about their behaviors and motives.

For, as Jesus will tell them in today’s reading, there is only one authentic motive for everything we do, namely love, all others being based in pride and fear. For love is the only force that takes us out of the self and its imprisonment in the “flesh,” which Jesus tells us is useless. The Pharisees and the rest thought they knew the greatest commandment, but they knew it only in a technical, religious sense. To love God with everything we have, meant for them to simply obey the letter of the law. That love never touched their hearts where true love, the love of God, resides in all of us. It was devoid of the Spirit and thus dead (like Ezekiel’s dry bones). It completely ignored the love of neighbor which Jesus tried to tell them is indispensable to that first law they seemed to think of as so important. As 1Jn 4:20 so powerfully asks, how can you love God, who you have never seen, when you do not love your neighbor who you do see? Even the Sadducee who asked Jesus the question (in Mark’s account in 12:32), had to admit that Jesus’ teaching was so very true.

The love of our neighbor has no limits or boundaries. It is not reserved to a few or to the deserving or those we deem worthy. Every human being is to be loved without exception. We are to love one another as Jesus loved us, that is, without conditions or exceptions. We are to love our enemies and those who persecute us. “If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? Even the godless do that.” The love Jesus speaks of, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” 1Cor 13:7-8

It is that love that enlivens even dead bones. It is that love that can do all things and for which nothing is impossible. It is the one thing necessary that Jesus told his beloved friend Martha. It is always focused out onto our neighbor. It forgives everything. Without it, Paul also told the Corinthians, everything else, no matter what, is useless. Jesus came to enable us to love one another with this love, his love, the love that God has for us. “I came that they might have life and have life in its fullness.” Love is the fullness of life. And as the Lord also told us, it has pleased the Father to simply give it to us. All we have to do is say a grateful yes.