HOMILY PRONOUNCED BY MONS. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
ORDINARY XV SUNDAY

Sunday, July 15th of 2007

HOW MUCH WE NEED TO BE GOOD CHRISTIANS?

Brothers, the Eucharist reunites us every Sunday to examine in our faith. We have in the Eucharist a motive force of our life of believers. The word not just questions us, but also all the liturgy with all its signs and actions makes us live more authentically what we celebrate. Let us thank to God for this gift of His love that is the Eucharist from the Sundays through which we contemplate His work fulfilled in his Son Jesus Christ and it is for us a continuous call to receive (in an attitude of grateful love) His love.

Teacher, ¿what must I do to have eternal life? A man asked Jesus. That man was not a common man. Saint Luke, the evangelist, says to us that it was an expert man in the law. That man did not ask because of being ignorant, he asked because of being a man with bad intentions. Saint Luke says that this man did that to sit a trap for him.

Maybe, sometimes, we have questioned ourselves: ¿what do I have to do to be good? ¿what do I have to do to save myself? We have learned that very well. Brothers, probably the answer, that we have given ourselves, has been a little hasty and favorable; in order to avoid many problems and to stay in peace with God and with ourselves. Brothers, maybe the questions have been sincere, but the answer has not been always like this.

But Jesus is very direct in the answer. Jesus sends him to the Scriptures, in which the law is the center, to scrutinize what it says and what it commands, because the man that questioned was a good connoisseur of the Scriptures. Once that man answered, he asked a very specific explanation in order to justify himself, and he asked: who is my fellow?

Is it very difficult to know who the fellow is? ¿Do we know the ones that are close (next) to us?, it seems that a Jew from the time of Jesus considered fellows only to the ones of the family, and to the countrymen.

Nevertheless, Jesus, through a parable, explains clearly who the fellow is. It is not only the one that is closer; it is also the one that needs more. Even more, Jesus presents another option to see and to recognize the fellow.

The legal expert had to ask: “who is a fellow”, in this sense the others are my fellow, and it is a passive sense-, but Jesus asked him: of whom you are a fellow? In this sense we are the ones that are or not close to the others, and it is an active sense. “I am” the fellow, when I approach with love the others. Therefore I must not ask: who is my fellow?, but I must ask: how can I be the fellow for the other, of any other man?. Close to me, who are the despised ones, those that are difficult to love?

After He sent his disciples to the mission, Saint Luke presents Jesus teaching about his content to us. This passage indicated that the mission consists first in living in love: in the love to God and to the fellow.

In the first reading the author of the Deuteronomy indicates forcefully that the law is very close to the heart to fulfill it. It is something that is inscribed in the same being of the man. And specially this law: the one of love.

It would not be necessary to make many speculations to practice this command; but we want frequently to evade this command that is a very elemental thing in the human and Christian life, we want to complicate its understanding with questions that frankly are not other thing that pretexts to avoid the compromise with Him.   

Saint Augustine of Hippo expressed the simplicity of this command of Jesus in a very direct and clear way: “love and do whatever you want”. To love is simple like this. But it is easy to say and it is difficult to do. And this is like this because it is easier to do other things that calm us about the fulfillment of the law and that they make us feel safe and good before God that loves in a serious way; to love risking the personal security and the tranquility.

Simply, brothers, it is necessary to love. Stop doing useless distinctions. Let us love spontaneously without reserves; without reluctance and interests that are different from love. Even more without motivations that are different from love; let us notice that the Samaritan did not have these motivations that sometimes we look for in a falsely pious way. This man does believe in God and in love, he saw in each man, a brother and to the same God. Comparison with love the work and the money, that the Samaritan had to give, were nothing.

The fellow is worthy to be loved. The salvation depends on it. This is the most effective way to obey the law and to announce the Gospel. Love speaks more than the words.

In the Eucharist, as we just saw, God invites us to review our faith and its expressions. My brothers, the contemplation of the mysteries take us to experience the love of God of which we have the best testimony in Christ, with his death and resurrection. This love of Christ for everybody, without excluding anybody; we have the best example of love (in the free love of God that He gives us in his Son) that we must live in the true religion and, rather, living as disciples and missionaries of Jesus. 

May the lady of the Tepeyac, our little girl, Holy Maria of Guadalupe that has expressed in these lands the unconditional and total love of God for us, illuminates us with her testimony of fidelity to God.

Amen.