Love is the answer
“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5: 24).
Matthew’s Gospel is the one which most addresses community issues – how the Church as the community of faith should present the gospel by the way it lives, rather than simply by the words it utters.
Matthew is the only evangelist to use the word ‘Church’ – meaning the assembly of those called out by God. There are three parts to today’s teaching:
1. (like the Ezekiel reading), the community is charged to exercise discipline amongst its members,
2. it is given authority to determine how the community should behave, and
3. it is given the assurance that the Lord will be present in those decisions.
Paul says the same in a more ‘broad brush’ approach: ‘love is the one thing that … is the answer to every one of the commandments.
That sense of who we are, and what we are about, seem appropriate as we come to the end of the Caritas Social Justice Week and continue (until 4 October) the Season of Creation.
Social Justice Week has been about peace. We cannot do anything about war, injustice, inequality, starvation, racism, unless we ourselves are living those opposites – that we are people of peace, equality, justice – otherwise we will have nothing to give.
The Season of Creation takes a stark look at our world and asks what we are going to do about the ecological mess we have gotten ourselves into. Prophet Amos cries out: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5: 24).
Fr Ron
