October 13

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind. S. Luke 10:27.

Jesus said, "Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live." Does our Lord mean, that in thus fulfilling the righteousness of the Law, there would be found eternal life? If so, how is this to be reconciled with what S. Paul says, that the Law could not possibly give life? The reason is this, that thus fulfilling the Law, in loving God, would bring to the end of the Law, which is Christ. For God is only known, or loved, or believed, as He is seen in Christ; Christ is the manifestation of God; the Law is the schoolmaster, teaching the love of God, in order to bring to Christ. Christ only is Love and Life. We can only have within us love or life, so far as Christ is in us. Here He lays down for us the great principle of love as fulfilling both the Law and the Gospel, in which is the union of man through Christ with God. "No sinner," says S. Augustine, "as such is to be loved; but every man as man is to be loved, for the sake of God. But God is to be loved for His own sake; and if God is more to be loved than any man, every one ought to love God more than himself; and another man is to be more loved than our own body, because he is capable of enjoying God, which the body cannot."

Religion hath a mightier power, Itself eternal, sure it can Eternalize the works of man.