Love Must Prevail

A Reflection on Today’s Gospel, Luke 14:1-6 – 3 November 2023

A Rule Follower…

     I used to know someone who proudly professed that she was a “rule follower.” In every thorny situation, she would go back to her organization’s list of rules and, where necessary, apply those rules dispassionately to others, often to their detriment. Her application of the rules went so far as to force many of her employees to do very odd things just “because the rules say so.” From her perspective the rules established a sense of order and peace. Her actions, humane or inhumane, were without seeming moral consequence to herself. She was simply following orders. Although she was the boss and had the power to override the rules when they did not necessarily make sense, she would only do so when it was to her benefit. This is the attitude that Jesus is tackling in the Gospel today. Any law, any rule, must give way to love, mercy, and healing. If it does not, is it just? In the words of the prophet Ezekiel, God is seeking to give us a new heart, a new spirit, remove our hearts of stone and give us a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

     It isn’t that the rules are bad. They are necessary for any group of people to live together in peace. Without respect for the rules, there can be no peace. There is only a constant struggle for the stronger to impose their will, their law, on the weakest. It is in the application of the law that humanity struggles. In the Gospel today, Jesus makes two things clear. One, love must trump all consideration of the law and two, apply the rule first to yourself before inflicting that rule on another. The Lord sums it up,

“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12 NABRE)

     God gave the people of Israel, and by extension the Church, the Ten Commandments or Decalogue. These laws are so important that God both spoke the laws to His people directly (Deuteronomy 5:22) and inscribed the law with His finger on stone tablets (Exodus 31:18). In terms of content, the Decalogue sums up the obligations of man toward God (commandments 1–3) and toward neighbor (commandments 4–10) and the sum is love! (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:20, and Luke 10:27) As people tried to go around the law, circumnavigate love, other laws are made such that in the time of Jesus there were at least 613 Laws. If you think that is a lot, it isn’t. Amazingly, in the United States no one knows the total number of federal laws. According to the Law Librarians of Congress, “trying to tally this number is nearly impossible.” In 1982 the Justice Department tried to count the number of Federal laws scattered across 50 Titles and 23,000 pages and then gave up. (paraphrased from Cali) We like rules until they apply to us.

 The Rule of Love, Mercy and Healing …

    In the Gospel today, Jesus asks the assembled Lawyers and Pharisees,

"Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?" (Luke 14:3 NABRE)

     We read in the Gospel that in response, “they kept silent.” (Luke 14:4 NABRE) Their silence convicts them. They know, Jesus illustrates for them, that they bend or violate the rules, the law, to care for their farm animals. So then, why aren’t those same laws or rules bent so that love, mercy, and healing for their fellow man predominate? In healing the man with dropsy, Jesus gives us the answer to His question. Love, mercy, and healing of the other must always prevail over any law or rule as we would wish that law or rule applied to us. Yet, even today in our own Church and Parishes, we often default to the rule before love, mercy, and healing.

     Jesus is speaking to us today. It is so easy to condemn the other of some infraction of a rule or law, to lay the burden of the law upon someone else’s shoulder, which we are, ourselves, unwilling, or unable, to carry in a similar circumstance. The Lord is calling for compassion (from the Latin compati - com "with" + pati "to suffer"). Jesus is calling for us not to condemn but to “suffer with” our neighbor.

      To sin is to fall short in carrying out God’s command to love Him and our neighbor. Given we have all sinned, fallen short of love, don’t we all hope in God’s love, mercy, and healing of our own souls to predominate over any judgement? Today, Jesus is calling us to always love first, demonstrate mercy first, remove the burden of the other first; before imposing rules or casting judgement. Love, God, must prevail over our every thought and action with regard to our neighbor whom God loves, as much as He loves us. As St Martin de Porres, whose memorial we celebrate today, is known to have stated,

“Charity, [love], is the cement that holds the world together.” (St Martin de Porres as quoted in Hopeline)

     Without love, the rules do not make sense.

“If we have a heart full of love, then no one around us is a stranger.”
 (St Martin de Porres as quoted in Hopeline)

End Notes:

Cali, Jeanine (2013, March 12). Frequent reference question: How many federal laws are there?: In Custodia legis. The Library of Congress. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/

Hopeline.com – Inspiring Hope and Positivity. (n.d.). Best 25 St Martin De Porres Quotes. Hope & Heal. https://hopeline.com/best-25-st-martin-de-porres-quotes/

New American Bible. Revised Edition (NABRE). Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011. Print.