Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Gospel which is now assigned to the Mass of the Seventeenth Sunday has given it the name of the Sunday of the Love of God, dating, that is, from the time when the Gospel of the cure of the dropsy and of the invitation to the wedding-feast was anticipated by eight days. Previously, even, to that change, and from the very first, there used to be read on this seventeenth Sunday another passage from the New Testament which is no longer found in this serial of Sundays: it was the Gospel which mentions the difficulty regarding the resurrection of the dead, which the Sadducees proposed to our Lord.Epistle – Ephesians iv. 1–6
Brethren, I, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called, with all humility and mildness, with patience, supporting one another in charity. Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Church, by thus giving these words from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, again takes up the subject so dear to her — the dignity of her children. She beseeches them to correspond, in a becoming manner, to their high vocation. This vocation, this call, which God gives us is, as we have been so often told, the call or invitation made to the human family that it would come to the sacred nuptials of divine union. It is the vocation given to us to reign in Heaven with the Word who had made Himself our Spouse, and our Head (Ephesians ii. 5). The Gospel read to us eight days ago which was formerly the one appointed for this present Sunday, and was thus brought into close connection with our Epistle, that Gospel, we say, finds itself admirably commented by these words of Saint Paul to the Ephesians and it, in turn, throws light on the Apostle’s words about the vocation. When you are invited to a Wedding (“cum vocatus fueris”) sit down in the lowest place! These were our Lord’s words to us, last Sunday and now we have the Apostle saying to us: Walk worthy of the vocation in which youare called, yes, walk in that vocation with all humility.
Let us now attentively hearken to our Apostle telling us what we must do in order to prove ourselves worthy of the high honour offered to us by the Son of God. We must practise, among other virtues, these three: humility, mildness and patience. These are the means for gaining the end that is so generously proposed to us. And, what is this end? It is the unity of that immense body which the Son of God makes His own by the mystic nuptials He vouchsafes to celebrate with our human nature. This Man-God asks one condition from those whom He calls, whom He invites, to become, through the Church, His Bride, bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh (Ephesians v. 30). This one condition is that they maintain such harmony among them, that it will make one body and one spirit of them all, in the bond of peace. “Bond most glorious!” cries out Saint John Chrysostom, “bond most admirable, which unites us all mutually with one another, and then, thus united, unites us with God.” The strength of this bond is the strength of the Holy Spirit Himself, who is all holiness and love. For it is that Holy Spirit who forms these spiritual and divine ties.
He it is who, with the countless multitude of the Baptised, does the work which the soul does in the human body, that is, it gives it life, and it unites all the members into oneness of person. It is by the Holy Ghost that young and old, poor and rich, men and women, distinct as all these are in other respects, are made one, fused, so to say, in the fire which eternally burns in the blessed Trinity. But in order that the flame of infinite love may thus draw into its embrace our regenerated humanity, we must get rid of selfish rivalries, and grudges, and dissensions, which, so long as they exist among us, prove us to be carnal, and therefore that we are unfit material for either the divine flame to touch, or for the union which that flame produces. According to the beautiful comparison of Saint John Chrysostom, when fire lays hold of various species of wood which have been thrown into it, if it find the fuel properly dry, it makes one burning pile of all the several woods. But if they are damp and wet it cannot act on them separately, nor reduce the whole to one common blaze: so is it in the spiritual order. The unhealthy humidity of the passions neutralises the action of the sanctifying Spirit, and union, which is both the means and end of love, becomes an impossibility.
Let us, therefore, bind ourselves to our brethren by that blessed link of charity which, if it fetters at all, fetters only our bad tempers but in all other respects it dilates our hearts by the very fact of its giving free scope to the Holy Ghost to lead them safely to the realisation of that one hope of our common vocation and calling, which is to unite us to God by love. Of course, charity, even with the Saints is, so long as they are on this Earth, a laborious virtue because even with the best, grace seldom restores to a perfect equilibrium the faculties of man which were put out of order by original sin. From this it follows that the weaknesses of human nature will sometimes show themselves, either by excess or by deficiency. And when these weaknesses do crop up, it is not only the saint himself is humbled by their getting the better of him, but, as he is well aware, they who live with him have to practise kindness and patience towards him. God permits all this in order to increase the merit of us all, and make us long more and more for Heaven. For it is there alone that we will find ourselves not only totally, but without any effort, in perfect harmony with our fellow-men. And this, because of the perfect peaceful submissiveness of our entire being under the absolute sway of the thrice holy God who will then be all to all. In that happy land, it will be God Himself who will wipe away the tears of His elect, for their miseries will all be gone. And their miseries will be gone because their whole being will be renovated, because united with Him, who is its infinite source (1 Corinthians iii. 3).
The eternal Son of God having then conquered in each member of His mystical Body the hostile powers and death itself, will appear in the fullness of the mystery of His Incarnation as the true Head of humanity, sanctified, restored, and developed in Him. He will rejoice at seeing how, by the workings of the sanctifying Spirit, there has been wrought the destined degree of perfection in each of the several parts of that marvellous Body which He vouchsafed to aggregate to Himself by the bond of love. And all this in order that He might eternally celebrate, in a choir composed of Himself, the Incarnate Word and all creation, the glory of the ever adorable Trinity. How will not the sweetest music of Earth be then surpassed! How will not our most perfect choirs seem to us then to have been almost like the noise of children singing out of tune, compared with the concord and harmony of that eternal song! Let us get ourselves ready for that heavenly concert. Let us put our voices in order by now attuning our hearts to that plenitude of love which, alas, is not often enjoyed here below, but which we should ever be trying to realise by that patiently supporting the faults of our brethren and ourselves, which the Epistle so earnestly impresses upon us.
One would almost say that in the ecstasy of her delight, at hearing these few sounds of heaven’s music brought to her by such a singer as her Apostle, our Mother the Church feels herself carried away far beyond time, and boldly joins a short song of her own to that of her Jesus and His Paul. Yes, it looks like it, for by way of a conclusion to the text of our Epistle, she adds an ardent expression of praise, which is not in the original, and thus she forms a kind of doxology to the inspired words of her apostolic Chanter.Gospel – Matthew xxii. 35–46
At that time, one of them, a doctor of the law, asked Him, tempting Him: “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him: “You must love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like this: “You must love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depends the whole law and the prophets.” And the Pharisees being gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying: “What think you of Christ? whose son is he?” “They said to Him: “David’s” He said to them: “How then, does David in spirit call him Lord, saying: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool? If David then calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no man was able to answer Him a word; neither did any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions.Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Man-God allowed temptation to approach His sacred person in the desert (Matthew iv. 1‒11). He disdained not to sustain the attacks which the devil’s spiteful cunning has from the world’s first beginning been suggesting to him as the surest means of working man’s perdition. Our Jesus permitted the demon thus to tempt Him, in order that He might show His faithful servants how they are to repel the assaults of the wicked spirit. Today our adorable Master, who would be a model to his children in all their trials (Hebrews ii. 17, 18; iv. 15) is represented to us as having to contend, not with Satan’s perfidy, but with the hypocrisy of His bitterest enemies, the Pharisees. They seek to ensnare Him in His speech (Matthew xxii. 15) just as the representatives of the world, which He has condemned (John xvi. 8‒11) will do to His Church, and that in all ages right to the end of time.
But as her divine Spouse triumphed, so will she, for He will enable her to continue His work on Earth, and amid the same temptations and the same snares. She is ever to come off with victory by maintaining a most inviolable fidelity to God’s law and truth. The tools of Satan, who are the heretics, and the princes of the world, chafing at the restraint put by Christianity on their ambition and lust, will always be studying how best to outwit the guardian of the divine oracles by their captious propositions or questions. When necessity requires her to speak, she is quite ready, for as Bride of that divine Word who is His Father’s eternal and substantial utterance, what can she be but a voice, either to announce Him on Earth, or sing Him in Heaven? That word of hers, endowed as it is with the power and penetration of God Himself, will not only never be taken by surprise but, like a two-edged sword, it will generally go much deeper than the crafty questioners of the Church anticipated. It will not only refute their sophistry, it will also expose the hypocrisy and wickedness of their intentions (Hebrews iv. 12). By their sacrilegious attempts they will have gained nothing but disgrace and shame, and the mortification of having occasioned a fresh lustre to Truth by the new light in which it has been put, and of having procured a clearer knowledge of dogma or morals for the devoted children of the Church.
It was thus with the Pharisees of today’s Gospel. As the Homily upon it tells us, they wanted to see if Jesus, who had declared Himself to be God, would not consequently make some addition to the commandment of divine love. And if He did, they would be justified in condemning Him as having tried to change the letter of the law in its greatest commandment. Our Lord disappoints them. He met their question by giving it a longer answer than they had asked for: that is, having first recited the text of the great commandment as given in the Scripture, He continued the quotation and, by so doing, showed them that He was not ignorant of the intention which had induced them to question Him: He continued the quotation by reminding them of the second commandment which is like the first — the commandment, that is, of love of the neighbour, and that condemned their intended crime of deicide. Thus were they convicted of loving neither their neighbour, nor God Himself, for the first commandment cannot be observed if the second, which flows from, and completes it, be broken.
But, our Lord does not stop there. He obliges them to acknowledge, at least, implicitly, the divinity of the Messiah. He puts a question, in His turn, to them, and they answer it by saying, as they were obliged to do, that the Christ was to be of the family of David. But if he be His Son, how comes it that David calls him “his Lord,” just as he calls God Himself, as we have it in the 109th Psalm, where he celebrates the glories of the Messiah? The only possible explanation is, that the Messiah, who in due time and as Man, was to be born of David’s house, was God and Son of God even before time existed, according to the same Psalm: “From my womb, before the day-star, I begot you” (cix. 3). This answer would have condemned the Pharisees, so they refuse to give it. But their silence was an avowal and, before very long, the eternal Father’s vengeance on these vile enemies of His Son will fulfil the prophecy of making them His footstool in blood and shame: that time is to be the terrible day when the justice of God will fall on the deicide city.
Let us Christians, out of contempt for Satan, who stirred up the expiring Synagogue to thus lay snares for the Son of God — let us turn these efforts of hatred into an instruction which will warm up our love. The Jews, by rejecting Christ Jesus, sinned against both of the commandments which constitute charity and embody the whole law. And we, on the contrary, by loving that same Jesus, fulfil the whole law. This Jesus of ours is the brightness of eternal glory (Hebrews i. 3) one, by nature, with the Father and the Holy Ghost. He is the God whom the first commandment bids us love. And it is in Him also that the second has its truest and adequate application. For, not only is He as truly Man as He is truly God, but He is the Man by excellence (John xix. 5) the perfect Man, on whose type, and for whom, all other men were formed (Romans viii. 29). He is the model and brother to all of them (Hebrews ii. 17). He is, at the same time, the leader who governs them as their King (John xviii. 37) and offers them to God as their High Priest (Hebrews x. 14). He is the Head who communicates to all the members of the human family both beauty and life, and movement and light. He is the Redeemer of that human family when it fell, and on that account He is, twice over, the source of all right, and the ultimate and highest motive, even when not the direct Object, of every love that deserves to be called love here below. Nothing counts with God, excepting so far as it has reference to this Jesus. As Saint Augustine says, “God only loves men inasmuch as they either are, or may one day become, members of His Son. It is his Son that He loves in them. Thus He loves, with one same love, though not equally, both His Word and the Flesh of His Word, and the members of His Incarnate Word. Now, Charity is love — love such as it is in God, communicated to us creatures by the Holy Ghost. Therefore what we should love by charity, both in our own selves and in others, is the divine Word as either being, or, as another expression of the same Saint Augustine adds, “that it may be,” in others and in ourselves.
Let us take care, also, as a consequence of this same truth, not to exclude any human being from our love, excepting the damned who are thereby absolutely and eternally cut off from the body of the Man-God. Who can boast that he has the Charity of Christ if he do not embrace His Unity? The question is Saint Augustine’s again. Who can love Christ without loving, with Him, the Church which is His Body? Without loving all His members? What we do, be it to the least or be it to the worthiest, be it of evil or of good, it is to Him we do it, for he tells us so (Matthew xxv. 404‒45). Then, let us love our neighbour as ourselves because of Christ, who is in each of us, and gives, to us all union and increase in Charity (Ephesians iv. 15, 16).
That same Apostle who says: “The end of the law is charity” (1 Timothy i. 5) says also “The end of the law is Christ” (Romans x. 4) 6 and we now see the harmony existing between these two distinct propositions. We understand, also, the connection there is between the word of the Gospel: “On these two commandments depends the whole law and the prophets,” and that other saying of our Lord: “Search the Scriptures, for the same are they that give testimony of me” (John v. 39). The fullness of the law, which is the rule of men’s conduct, is in Charity (Romans xiii. 10), of which Christ is the end, just as the Object of the revealed Scriptures is no other than the Man-God who embodies in His own adorable unity, for us His followers, all moral teaching, and all dogma. He is our faith and our love, “the end of all our resolutions,” says Saint Augustine, “for all our efforts tend but to this — to perfect ourselves in Him. And this is our perfection — to reach Him: having reached Him, seek no farther, for he is your End.” The holy Doctor gives us, when we have reached this point, the best instruction as to how we are to live in the divine union: “Let us cling to One, let us enjoy One, let us all be one in Him:” hoereamus Uni, fruamur Uno, permaneamus unum.
