“What think you of Christ?”
MASS Terribilis est
LESSON Ephesians 4:1-6
GOSPEL St Matthew 22:34-46
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
There are questions which can be answered casually and forgotten almost at once. There are others which expose a man completely. Our Lord asks one of those questions in today’s Gospel: “What think you of Christ?” Before He asks it, He has given the greatest commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.” Then He joins to it the second: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” But He does not stop there. He turns upon the Pharisees and asks them who they think the Christ really is. The Gospel will not let us speak vaguely about love while leaving Christ Himself safely at the edge of our lives.
The Pharisees answer that the Messias is the son of David. That is true, but it is not enough. Our Lord therefore quotes the Psalm: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit on my right hand.” If David calls the Messias Lord, how can He be merely David’s son? The Christian answer is the one the Pharisees will not give: Christ is indeed the son of David according to His human nature, but He is also David’s Lord. He is not merely a teacher sent by God. He is God the Son made man. And therefore the first commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”, meets us not only in an abstract principle but in the Person of Jesus Christ.
This is why today’s Gospel is far more demanding than a sermon about being nice. The modern world is very comfortable with the word “love”, provided nobody defines it too closely. Love can come to mean approval, indulgence, affirmation, avoidance of disagreement, or simply being pleasant. But Our Lord does not say, “Feel warmly about everybody.” He says that the first duty of man is to love God with the whole heart, and only then does He tell us to love our neighbour as ourselves. The order matters, because the second commandment receives its meaning from the first. If we no longer know what man is for, we will eventually cease to know what his true good is.
St Augustine understood this with great clarity. Sin is often disordered love. We may love something which should not be loved, or love a lesser thing more than a greater thing, or make a created good into an ultimate good. The problem is not always that a man loves nothing. Often he loves intensely, but in the wrong order. Money is not evil, but to love it more than justice corrupts a man. Human affection is good, but to love another person in such a way that we assist him in sin is not charity. Reputation is not worthless, but to value the approval of men above fidelity to Christ is idolatry. The first commandment restores the proper order: God first, and everything else beneath Him.
That word “whole” is therefore terribly serious: “with thy whole heart”. We spend much of our spiritual lives trying to negotiate a smaller settlement with God. We may be prepared to give Him Sunday morning, certain prayers, certain moral limits, perhaps some time and sacrifice, provided there remain rooms within us into which He does not enter. We may say in practice, “Lord, You may have my religion, but not my ambition; my devotions, but not my resentment; my public conduct, but not my private habits; my defence of the Faith, but not the way I speak to my family.” Yet the commandment does not say, “Love God with the religious part of thy heart.” It says the whole heart.
St Thomas Aquinas explains that we cannot in this life think explicitly about God every waking moment. That is not what the commandment requires. It means rather that God must hold the governing place. Nothing may be deliberately preferred to Him. Every other legitimate love must be capable of being brought beneath His law. The test is not whether we constantly feel religious, but whether, when God and some rival good come into conflict, we are prepared to choose God.
This is where charity becomes concrete. It is easy to say that we love God when nothing is being asked of us. It is easy to say that we love the Faith when nobody challenges it. It is easy to praise forgiveness until somebody wounds us, or purity until temptation persists, or sacrifice until obedience costs comfort, reputation, friendship or convenience. The love of God proves itself precisely when another love demands His place and we refuse to surrender it.
Then comes the second commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” We love the neighbour because he belongs to God, because he bears God’s image, because Christ shed His Blood for him, and because he too is called to eternal life. That makes Christian charity much more serious than mere indulgence. If I truly love another man, I cannot be indifferent to whether he destroys himself spiritually. I cannot call sin good simply because truth may cause discomfort. Neither may I use truth cruelly, vindictively or self-righteously. Charity requires both truth and the desire for the other person’s salvation.
This becomes especially important in family life. We often imagine that great acts of charity belong elsewhere, yet most of us will practise or fail in charity in kitchens, sitting rooms, workplaces and ordinary conversations. It is possible to defend Catholic doctrine vigorously and then speak to one’s spouse with contempt. It is possible to lament the crisis in the Church while making one’s own home miserable through impatience. It is possible to insist upon reverence at Mass and then spend Sunday afternoon destroying another person’s reputation. The love of God and love of neighbour cannot be divided like that. The same heart offers both.
St Paul makes the same point in today’s Epistle. He urges humility, mildness, patience and the bearing of one another in charity because Christians have been called into “one body and one spirit”. Then comes his great confession: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Unity and truth are not enemies. St Paul does not say that unity requires us to become vague about the Faith. Christian unity exists because there is one Lord and one Faith.
That matters especially in a time of confusion in the Church. We can become so consumed with what is wrong that we forget what fidelity is for. The purpose of preserving the traditional Faith is not to become permanently angry. The purpose of defending the liturgy is not to cultivate superiority. The purpose of identifying error is not to enjoy being right. We guard the Faith because it is true, because it came from Christ, because souls need it, and because we love Him. If our defence of Tradition makes us proud, bitter or malicious, something has gone wrong in us even when the doctrine we defend is correct.
At the same time, charity does not mean surrendering truth to avoid conflict. St Paul says “one faith”, not many incompatible faiths. A doctor does not love the patient by refusing to name the disease. A father does not love his child by approving whatever may destroy him. Charity sometimes consoles, sometimes corrects, sometimes forgives, sometimes warns, and sometimes must refuse. What makes these acts charitable is that they seek the true good of the other person under God.
St Alphonsus Liguori, preaching on this Gospel, says that the great work of our life is to learn to love God. That sounds simple until we ask ourselves what our lives reveal. What do we fear losing most? Whose approval matters most to us? What resentment do we refuse to surrender? What habit do we protect from conversion? What inconvenience are we unwilling to suffer for the Faith? These questions reveal the practical order of our loves more accurately than many pious sentiments.
The cure is not to manufacture religious emotion. We learn to love God by knowing Him, praying to Him, receiving Him, obeying Him and remembering what He has done for us. Spend time before the Crucifix. Consider what it means that the Son of God loved you unto death. Go to confession not merely to erase guilt but to remove what competes with God. Receive Holy Communion with the deliberate intention that Christ should possess more of you than before. Practise charity towards those whom you find difficult precisely because Christ commands it. Love grows by being exercised.
And so the question at the end of today’s Gospel must become personal: What think you of Christ? Not what does society think of Him, not what do theologians say about Him, but what does your life reveal that you think of Him? If He is truly Lord, then He cannot remain an ornament around the edges of life. If He is God, He cannot receive what happens to be left over after every other concern has been satisfied.
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost leaves us with one great task: to bring the heart back into order. God first, and because God is first, neighbour loved more truly; truth defended without hatred; error resisted without pride; duty embraced without bargaining; Christ not merely admired but obeyed and adored. That is the beginning of a whole heart. And when Our Lord asks us, as He asked the Pharisees, “What think you of Christ?”, may the answer be given not only by our lips, but by the entire order of our lives.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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