HOMILY FOR FRIDAY OF THE 3RD WEEK OF LENT, LITURGICAL CALENDAR / YEAR B
HOMILY FOR FRIDAY OF THE 3RD WEEK OF LENT, LITURGICAL CALENDAR / YEAR B
THEME: I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to complete them.
BY: Fr Deotacious Chikontwe SMA
READINGS OF THE DAY
Hosea 14:2-10
Psalm 80:6,8-11,14,17
Mark 12:28-34
LITURGICAL COLOUR
PURPLE/VIOLET
INTRODUCTION
Good morning my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate Friday of the Third Week of Lent, Liturgical Calendar Year B.
ALSO RECOMMENDED: HOMILY FOR FRIDAY OF THE 2ND WEEK OF LENT.
FROM OUR FIRST READING
Today’s first reading is very striking in many ways. The Lord speaking through the prophet Hosea calls on his people to come back to him and if they do the Lord promises them to love them with all his heart. The Lord goes on to say to his people, ‘I am like a cypress ever green, all your fruitfulness comes from me’. Because the Lord alone loves us with all his heart, he alone is the source of true life for us. The Lord calls out to us in love, pleading with us to keep turning to him as the one who can allow our lives to bear rich fruit, the fruit of the Spirit.
FROM OUR GOSPEL READING
In this morning’s gospel reading, a scribe, an expert in the Jewish Law, asks Jesus the question, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Given that it was understood that there were 613 commandments, this question was a sincere effort on the part of the scribe to get to the core of the Jewish Law, to separate out what really mattered from what is less important. The word that stands out in Jesus’ answer is ‘love’ and, in the first instance, the love of God. Jesus declares that God deserves a unique kind of love, a love that flows from the whole person, a love with all our heart, the seat of the will, with all our soul, the seat of desire, with all our mind, the seat of understanding, and with all our strength, understood as spiritual strength. Jesus goes on to give the scribe something he didn’t ask for, the second greatest commandment, which is to love our neighbour as ourselves.
CONCLUSION
God is to be loved directly with all our faculties, heart, soul, mind and strength. Such love of God will certainly show itself in prayer and worship. Jesus also states that if this love of God is genuine it will overflow into loving our neighbour, recognizing in the neighbour the presence of Jesus and of the One who sent him. Although Jesus doesn’t explicitly say so here, this love of God which overflows into love of neighbour is a response to God’s unconditional love of us, expressed in God’s giving of his Son to us so that we may have life and have it to the full.
The Lord be with You.
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