24^th Day of Lent:

     March 28, 2014:

 “Love your God...

            and neighbor”

                                                               (Mark 12: 29-30)

I used to have a neighbor who was at daily mass and lead all the novenas and prayers so religiously that everyone thought her to be an epitome of piety.  This same woman was very abusive to her neighbors in words and deeds. I never understood that dichotomy or disconnect between liturgy and life.

Is it not that your life is fed by the liturgy and liturgy fed by life? I believe the reason why Jesus combined two commandments into one i.e. “love the Lord your God with all your heart… and your neighbor as yourself’ is precisely because we cannot really separate these two commandments.

These two loves are like the two sides of the same coin. The First Letter of John takes on this law of love when he says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother (sister), he is a liar; for he who does not love his neighbor whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1John 4.20).

In the same vein, St. Catherine of Sienna once heard God tell her, “I have placed you in the midst of your brother and sisters so that you can do for them what you cannot do for me.

That is, you can love them freely without expecting any return”.

 Can we honestly say that I have grown closer spiritually to my neighbors, be it my brother, sister, husband, wife, children, coworker, any one I come in contact with during this season of lent?

As Pope Francis exhorts us in the Joy of the Gospel, “before all else, the Gospel invites us to respond to the God of love who saves us, to see God in others and to go forth from ourselves to seek the good of others.

Under no circumstances can this invitation be obscured” (EG39). In other words, our love for God is result of God ‘pouring his love into our hearts’ as St. Paul tells us, and this love must overflow into our neighbors out of our love for God.

Let this day be one when we pray that someone whom we don’t see eye to eye, the one who is difficult to love, so that we may have the courage to open our hearts to love the unlovable.

Let this law of love get the best of us.

God Bless you always!
Sincerely Yours,
Rev. Fr. Cyriac Chandy Mattathilanickal, MS

Wishing you and yours A Holy Lent!

Rev. Fr. Tom Puthusseril, M.S.

Shrine Director