20261025 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

[그리움하나]

(Ex 22:20–26; 1 Thes 1:5c–10; Mt 22:34–40): As If Meeting You Right Here… We Long for Eternity

Dear brothers and sisters, we stand today on the last Sunday of the month of the Holy Rosary, and within the gaze and embrace of God’s mercy and love, we humbly look back on the time we have walked through.

Some years ago, when we met changes in the world that we could never have imagined, a certain phrase took deep root in our hearts: “New Normal.” Everyday life, which we thought would always stay the same, had begun to crack, and we had to accept the loneliness of unfamiliar distancing. The phrase expressed our hope to adapt to a way of life in which we cared for one another and kept our distance with prudence, a life in which new standards and new ways of living would become the norm.

Yet as a few more years have passed, how complicated the affairs of human life have become! Beginning in our own souls, then reaching to matters between one person and another, then to wider circles of relationships, and even to the balance of society and the world, we must endure countless changes.

And still, the more this is so, the more we long for constancy that does not change, for an everyday life we can always receive with the same warmth, and ultimately for eternity, where a sincere soul and heart can rest. This longing grows within us as an inescapable part of our nature. Indeed, each of us carries on the journey with a spiritual yearning to be healed of the emptiness we feel amid the complexity our hearts and souls must bear, in a hurried present with no room to breathe.

And so the Lord tells us, in Matthew 22:37, 39, and 40: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. … You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” This means that the spiritual journey, in which we long for God and for the embrace of the fullness of truth and yearn for healing, is never separated from our dealings with people in the very midst of our lives. Rather, he shows us that they are two sides of one and the same call. For God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven is a matter of this very earth on which we plant our two feet.

In Exodus 22:20 and 26, let us engrave deep in our souls these words of God: “You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. … If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate.” We meditate once more on the Lord, the Word made flesh, who came to us like us in all things but sin, the Son of Man whom we could see and touch, and on his self-emptying. God commands his people to care for those in need: the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. For true reverence for God cannot be separated from how we treat those who suffer or are cast aside. When we show mercy and compassion to our neighbor, the Mass we offer to the Lord becomes a living reality; it becomes a “breathing Mass.”

The way we perceive people, and the attitudes and habits that have become second nature in our hearts and daily relationships, will show how harmoniously we are joining our spiritual life to our real life. In a glance, in a feeling, in the person we reveal at a decisive moment of choice, in how we treat others as our position or status changes, or in the difference between how we act before the weak and before the strong, we can glimpse the truth dwelling in a person’s spirit. A person may disguise his or her appearance for a time, but in the end, a person is revealed in crisis.

That is why the Apostle Paul writes, in 1 Thessalonians 1:5 and 9: “You know what sort of people we proved to be among you for your sake. … They themselves openly declare about us what sort of reception we had among you.” With these words he praises a community whose faith had become a visible example to others. Even in a time of trial, they joyfully welcomed the Gospel and let its echo carry far beyond the borders of their community.

Mary Magdalene, searching anxiously for the Lord, had her eyes opened at last, in the memory of love carried by the warm voice of the one she had taken for the gardener. And she ran with all her strength to the disciples to proclaim that the Lord is risen. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus also failed at first to recognize him, yet afterward they said that their hearts burned within them as he spoke to them about himself and broke the bread.

Beloved, where and how do we meet Christ, and are we living as people who help others understand what that meeting means? How do we recognize and hear the Lord who comes to us in daily life, the resonance of his voice, an invitation that stirs the soul like an echo?

We pray for the grace to love and long for the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, the Lord who fills the empty places of our souls with boundless mercy and love. We pray, too, that we may embrace and honor the tears and wounds of those we meet, and sense the fragrance of love. And in this very place where these two paths meet, may we grow in the hope of a faithful and deep faith, so that we may meet the Lord who calls us in love. Amen.