October 3, Monday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time
Daily Readings: Galatians 1:6-12 Gospel: Matthew 9:18-26
In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us to fulfil two commandments to inherit eternal life. These two commandments are the summary of the ten commandments.
The first one is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.”
A boy loves a girl very much. The boy is naughty so the girl said to the boy, “If you love me, please do not smoke cigarettes.” The boy replied, “Yes. I will not.” “Alcohol also?” “Yes, I will,” answered the boy. The boy did as the girl asked him to do. Why did the boy fulfil the request of his girlfriend? The answer is that he loves her so much. Likewise, if we love our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, we will do what God asks us to do. We will not do what God does not like. If so, we are already doing good things and avoiding the bad things.
The second commandment is “you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Everybody loves oneself more than the other. Now if I place apples at the entrance of the Church and say to you that each one can take one, everybody will choose the best one, the biggest one. Nobody will choose the rotten one to let his/her friends eat the better one. That means, we love ourselves more.
One scribe asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. Our neighbours are the ones with whom we are dealing, the ones with difficulties and are needy; it could be our family members or friends at work. We should love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
If we love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our strength, and with all our minds, we will do whatever God wants us to do. If we love our neighbours as we love ourselves, we will think of others first in whatever we do. Fulfilling what God wants us to do and thinking of others first will help us to inherit eternal life.
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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