Homily for 3 November 2024 by Fr. Oscarito Antonio Boongaling
31st SUNDAY in Ordinary Time
There is this Hindu myth that explains why the sea is salty. The waters of the sea was once sweet. A salt doll was travelling, asking herself, “Who am I?” She saw the sea dancing through its waves. She drawn to him. Then she asked him, “Who are you?” The sea smilingly replied, “Come in and see.” So the doll waded in. The farther it walked into the sea the more it dissolved, until there was only very little of it left. Before that last bit dissolved, the doll exclaimed in wonder, “Now I know who I am!” Now we can see why the sea and its saltiness cannot be separated. It is love that invites us to leave what separates us from God and one another and be willing to realize what makes us one.
The first reading is the profession of faith and a prayer among our Jewish brethren – it is their response to God’s invitation to his covenant with them. To love God with their whole selves, with their whole being. Why do they need to love God in such a way? Because love is the very nature of God (1 John 4:7-12).While we were yet sinners, he commended his (total, unconditional) love for us through the death of his Son (Romans 5:8). God’s love endures forever (Psalm 136). God does not impose, but he invites his people to respond to his love. It is not just external conformity to the law, but a total commitment and obedience to God who has kept his promises of long life and prosperity to his chosen ones.
Our responsorial psalm is a person’s appropriate response to God’s love – the psalmist recognizes God as a rock on whom he could depend on. To love God is to recognize that he is the source of our life and our strength. This reminded me of a line from a popular song: “Lean on me, when you’re not strong. I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.”
Jesus, in the Gospel, offers the greatest commandment as an answer to the scribe’s question: to love God with one’s whole being (Deut. 6:5) and to love neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18). In the second commandment, I felt Jesus was asking not just looking at the neighbor in the other, but to look at the neighbor in ourselves (as how God has seen us as other and loved us anyway). Jesus emphasized that this inseparable commandments to love must occupy one’s entire being and takes priority over everything else. He even affirms the scribe not just in his study and knowledge of the law, but perhaps Jesus saw how the scribe has understood its implication and practiced the commandment to love in his own life.
To love is not just at the level of feelings and affection. It is not just fulfilling our commitment when and where it is convenient or with someone we are comfortable with. In the second reading, the author points to how Jesus serves as a model of someone who has shown us what it means to truly love, someone who has seriously committed himself to the God’s invitation to love. He became the high priest and the lamb of sacrifice. He interceded for us and offered his very life for the forgiveness of our sins. He has awakened in us our true identity – that we are children of God, heirs of the promise God has made through our ancestors, that made in God’s image and likeness, we are also called to love, it is in dying to ourselves that we realize and recognize who we truly are. It is like what someone said in the past, “When you genuinely love, be ready to sacrifice and experience pain.”
Allow to me to end with this religious song that I used to sing with my fellow religious back home that captures the messages of the Hindu myth and the readings today: Lose yourself in me and you will find yourself. Lose yourself in me and you will find new life. Lose yourself in me and you will find yourself. Yes, you will live and you will live in my love.
