Year A
Exodus 22:20-26;
Psalm 18; 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40
"You shall love
the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
mind. This is the greatest and the first
commandment. The second is like it: You
shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets
depend on these two commandments."
Matthew 22:37-40
Love God; love your neighbor. Our Lord had a way of making things
easy. In today’s Gospel we hear Him take
all the laws of the Old Testament and summarize them in this way. If you can’t remember all the particulars and
all the subtle nuances, then default to our Lord’s summary: love God and love
your neighbor.
The two go together.
We demonstrate our love for God by loving others. We learn to truly love others by loving God.
These thoughts serve as an excellent launching point to
address a critical issue that arose this past week in the news. The facts are still coming in, but it
appeared that the Holy Father made statements in a personal interview
advocating for legal unions for same-sex couples. We will leave the particulars of the
interview. But this raises the topic of
how the Church responds to those with same-sex attraction.
Let’s look at this topic through the lens of the two great
commandments given to us. Let’s begin
with the second: love your neighbor as yourself.
The Catechism is helpful here. Paragraph 2358 states, referring to those
with homosexual tendencies, “They must be accepted with respect, compassion,
and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be
avoided.” Let me expand a little on
that. Every person has been created in
the image and likeness of God.
Consequently, each person has an inherent dignity with which they must
be treated. While sin has marred God’s
original intention it has not eclipsed this dignity in any of us. So we must embrace our homosexual neighbors
with love and compassion. This is, after
all, what any of us would want for ourselves.
But we must understand that loving the person does not mean
loving, or even condoning, everything they might do. As much as we love our children,
disobedience, lying, stealing, or violence must always be opposed lest our
children get the impression that these are acceptable behaviors and grow up to
continue in the same. Our society has
succeeded in convincing most of us that homosexuals must act on their
inclinations in order to express who they are.
This is no more true than it is for heterosexuals. God has not created us to be like animals who
merely respond to instinct, but, as we said, He has created us in His image and
likeness which means we possess the faculty of reason to choose what we will do
with our bodies, either to honor or dishonor God.
This brings us to the first command: love God. Our love for God cannot mean any less than
obedience to His commands and full surrender to them. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments,” [John 14:15]. One of
God’s commandments is “You shall not commit adultery”. This takes in all sins of a sexual
nature. The perspective is to draw our
attention to marriage as God intended: one man and one woman for a lifetime
with openness to life. That is the
standard. Within that context sexual
relations are blessed. But outside of
it, they are gravely sinful. Following
the Church’s unbroken Tradition going back to our Lord Himself, the Church has
always seen homosexual actions as “intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They
close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine
affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be
approved,” [CCC 2357]. “Disordered” can
be seen as opposed to the proper use of the sexual gift. “Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of
man and woman,” [CCC 2360].
It is love, not hate, which leads us to warn those who are
practicing homosexuals to turn from their sins in order to receive God’s
forgiveness and His grace. We love them
enough to tell them the truth, even if we are vilified for it. The truth will truly set them free and bring
them the love, peace, and joy they are craving.
I recognize that my words appear as bigoted, ignorant, and
outdated to those who refuse to accept what God has revealed. Still, we make our plea: “Be reconciled to
God,” [2 Corinthians 5:20].
Dear friends, please do not be swayed by the winds of
popular sentiment. Rather, immerse
yourself in prayer and in the teaching of the Church. Draw near to God to love Him with all that
you are and He will fill you with His love to dispense to a world so
desperately in need of it.
Love God; love neighbor. It’s really all you need. It applies to this issue and every other. If in doubt, default to these two great commandments!
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