Scripture readings for this reflection can be found at Friday of the Third Week of Lent | USCCB
Our gospel for today our Lord clearly lays out
what it means to be in relationship with God. For most of us it may seem easy
to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind, and strength, but then Jesus adds:
“And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Following this “golden rule” is not always easy
once we leave our prayer time with God. We come to church with our list of
concerns for ourselves and prayer requests for others. We study scripture daily
by reading the daily scripture readings for Mass. God is indeed the focus of
who we are when we come to church. These are all good things.
But the challenge is when we move beyond our
prayer time and encounter people that may not be easy to get along with. Just
going through our daily routine, we come across people that may get on our
nerves by being rude towards us. Or we may have those family members that may
press our buttons. Loving these people as we love ourselves is not an easy
thing. But it’s what Jesus is calling us to do. Everyone we meet during the
day, whether we like them or not, are made in the image of God, and that’s what
the Lord is teaching us. We must see the image of God in all the people we meet
and to love them as we love ourselves. We don’t have to “like” them, but we are
called to love them.
The best way to respond to love of neighbor is to
pray for all those in our lives, both those we find easy to love, and those who
may get on our nerves. Pray for their intentions and pray that we may see the
image of God in all those people we meet during the day.
From Arlene B. Muller
ReplyDeleteI think the first commandment might actually be more challenging than we think, if we seriously think about it. I believe that I really love GOD & that I seek to put Our LORD & pleasing & obeying Him in the center of everything in my life & not just make religion & faith a section or category of my life but let it permeate my entire life.
But I wonder to what extent I really love GOD more than I love myself & love Him with everything within me. I can say "I want to do Your will" but find "Do with me what You will" too scary, since I don't know what suffering He might have in mind.
For me the hardest people for me to love & for whom I tend to forget to pray (but should pray) are the leftist pro-abortion politicians who do everything in their power to support, promote, & enable abortion, even of potentially viable unborn babies, who fund abortion with our tax dollars against our will & conscience & even persecute peaceful pro-life advocates, pro-life organizations & pregnancy resource centers (which means that they don't really support "choice" but only abortion)--especially doing this while calling themselves "Catholic" & even "devout Catholics"! I am a fairly easygoing person, but these make my blood boil.
I wish GOD would give them a vision of the place in hell they deserve so that they would get enough of the fear of GOD (above & beyond the love of money from the abortion industry) to convert & help to protect the lives of unborn babies & help women in crisis pregnancies to choose life. Maybe this is how to pray for rhem.