7th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Feb. 19, 2023

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Feb. 19, 2023

7A23.   Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18.   “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.” “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Hebrew Law or Torah was concerned with fraternal love so that one does not hurt one’s kin.  However that love was not commanded for everyone but only those who were somehow related or connected to you.

Matthew 5:38-48.   Again Jesus changes the Old Testament Law or Torah as he says, “But I say to you.”  Now Jesus calls upon us to love everyone, just as God loves everyone for whom “he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  In the Old Testament God gave just Ten Commandments.  Now God commands us to do and obey everything he wants of us.  “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  This means we are to be in his image and likeness as God created us to be, holy as he is holy, love as he is love.  (Genesis1:26-27)  God the Father wants his child to the person he created us to be, what he had in mind for us when he first thought of us.  God the Father wants to be proud of how well, with his aid, we have turned out when we stand before him at the end of our life before the pearly gates.

1 Corinthians 3:16-23.  “You are the temple of God” because “the Spirit of God dwells within you.”  By our Baptism, the Holy Spirit dwells within us.  The God who died on the cross for us because he loved us so deeply and dearly loves us so very much that he lives within us.  Let us embrace the God who embraces us.  Let us belong to the God who wishes to belong to us, if we but open ourselves to him.  This world endlessly and at times overwhelmingly tempts us to belong to it.  The immediacy and strength of the physical presence of this world often dominates us so that we can lose sight of the God who is the foundation of goodness and eternal love.  However, everything that is not of God is worthless, if not, in the end, destructive.