Year A
Exodus 22:21-27
Psalm 18:2-3a.3bc-4.47 and 51ab (R. 2)
1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10
Matthew 22:34-40
VULNERABILITY IN LOVE
Love is both given and received, for one to be able to Love, one must be powerful enough to give and vulnerable enough to receive. The powerful has all, the vulnerable has nothing. The powerful is the one who gives because the powerful have enough to give. The vulnerable is the one who receives because the vulnerable has nothing.
We mostly approach Love looking at the power in Love, forgetting that Love is balanced with vulnerability. Vulnerable from the Latin vulnerÄbilis or vulnerare means “injurious, wounding," or "wound." So a vulnerable person is capable of being wounded or hurt physically or emotionally.
So being both ALL and NOTHING is part of LOVE. God is Love, and St. John of the Cross makes us understand that God is Todo [ALL] in himself and Nada [NOTHING] is his action. We serve a God who is all powerful yet humbles himself to serve us. A God who humbles himself and becomes flesh to save us. A God who becomes vulnerable to the extent that humans can hold him in their hands in the blessed Eucharist or as a baby in the hands of his mother Mary.
When only the power side of Love is at work, Love is not complete and vice versa. Today in the first reading, the stress is on the receiving side; the stranger, the widow, the orphan and the poor. They are all vulnerable, the are all Weak because they have lost their most treasured things. Thus they have nothing.
The stranger has lost his hometown or homeland, the widow has lost her husband, the orphan has lost his or her parents, the poor has no money or property. For them to experience Love, they must be given Love according to what they need to receive, a place to call home, a husband figure, parents and properties.
We can only be truly touched by Love if we open ourselves to receive when we are at the receiving end and be eager to give when we are at the given side. As Christians or people of faith, Faith makes us both powerful and vulnerable. Faith involves putting your whole trust or being in the unseen reality, God. This is were the vulnerability is at play, but since it involves putting your whole trust in God and hence imitating his action of nothingness, you become powerful because he who is ALL in ALL becomes your ALL.
If you are not willing to become vulnerable or make God or others enter into your situations or share your needs and secrets for help, if you are not willing to open up, you are not willing to be Loved by God or others and Love others.
In the gospel today, as the Lawyer asked Jesus Christ about the greatest of the Laws. This follows after Jesus Christ silenced the Sadducees on their question concerning resurrection. Now the Pharisees also wants to test Jesus with the question of the Law. About 613 Laws he should tell them which is the greatest.
He just refer them to the Shema, which they recites three times a day;
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
'Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh. You must love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Let the words I enjoin on you today stay in your heart. You shall tell them to your children, and keep on telling them, when you are sitting at home, when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are standing up; you must fasten them on your hand as a sign and on your forehead as a headband; you must write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
And also the Law concerning showing Love to ones neighbors;
Leviticus 19:18
"You will not exact vengeance on, or bear any sort of grudge against, the members of your race, but will love your neighbour as yourself. I am Yahweh."
He then add that upon these two commandments, Love of God and Love of neighbor, hang the Law and the Prophets which is the Jewish Canon or Old Testament for Christians. Giving and receiving, sacrificing and been sacrificed, become a balanced powerful yet vulnerable person, Love is the summary of the Law. When you show love you are powerful, when you are been loved you are weak.
I repeat, no one can experience Love is he or she is not vulnerable or have totally surrendered to the other, the lover. No one can give Love if he or she does not possess love. St. Paul in the second reading commend the Thessalonians for living according to the faith the taught them; given love and receiving love as the verses 1-5 talks about.
The mentioning of the Holy Spirit who is also know as the Love existing between the Lover (God the Father), and his Beloved (God the Son) in the second reading and the mentioning of when you take someone's cloak in pledge, you will return it to him at sunset, has draw my attention to the importance of the Holy Spirit in our giving and receiving of Love.
Let me reflect with the cloak, the question I will ask about the cloak is, what if the cloak is not taken away in a pledge but like how humans lost the glory of God in the Garden it is forcefully removed? The only way to get back this glory is through the sacrifice on the Cross which is God's greatest act of Love from which we die to our old self and resurrect to a new self.
Just as the young man in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark's gospel was striped of his line cloth (cf. Mark 14:51), but after the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus was adorned in a new white robe to announce the gospel (cf. Mark 16:5)
Love is our glorious clothes and without Love we cease to be, for Love is our life.
By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
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