WORD 2day: Friday, 19th week in Ordinary time
August 16, 2019: Joshua 24: 1-13; Matthew 19: 3-12
The gratuitous love of God and the conditional love of humans – that is the contrast that the Word brings to the fore today. Taking the reins from Moses, the young Joshua consolidates his people reminding them of the great history of faith and wonders that they have behind them, the great things that God had accomplished for them though they deserved none of them!
The love that God lavishes on us, and the measure in which God does it, we do not deserve it at all. It is a gratuitous gift from God and God has never counted the cost, even to the extent of sending the only Son of God as a ransom on our behalf (cf. John 3:16). That love is the model set before us, by Jesus.
When Jesus changed the commandment of Leviticus (19:18) from ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (Jn 13:34), Jesus made a deliberate choice to propose God’s love as the model. Accepting one another, forgiving one another, being good to one another, wishing the good of the other with all one's heart – in all these we are called to measure up to none less than God, who is Love itself!
At times in problematic marriages, what we observe is exactly a lack of this. They say we were totally in love, until one day when we decided to break up! What is so painful to realise is that it was no love at all in the first place. They were trying to please each other or get pleased by each other - how long can that go?
Any relationship which has to last for life should not be based on expectations and fulfillments, but be modelled on the love of God - a love that expects nothing, but gives everything!