Leslie Miranda
| | | Dt 30:10-14 Col 1:15-20 Lk 10:25-37 | | July,11 | | 15th Sunday of the Year | The tallest lawyer and the shortest lawyer in town met as rivals in a court case. Arguments flowed. Laws and bye-laws were quoted and misquoted to safeguard their clients’ interests. Then, surprisingly, the tallest lawyer lost his calm. He yelled at the dwarf lawyer: “Do you know I can put you in my pocket?” The dwarf retorted calmly: “Sir, if you do it, you will have more brains in your pocket than in your head.”
A lawyer has his head filled with facts. He can twist them to his advantage. In today’s Gospel a lawyer poses a problem to Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Eternal life does not depend on a single law or rule. It depends on the law of love. It covers a full life. It calls for a tuning in of one’s entire life to God.
To the lawyer’s question the Lord |
| gave no answer. He chose to put a question to the lawyer, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer showed how well he knew the law and so he answered: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” The Master gave him full marks for the theory and said: “Now put it in to practice, and you shall live.”
But the lawyer failed to understand the implications of his own words and so he asked:
“Who is my neighbour?” The dictionary gives this meaning: The one who stays next door. The Jews regarded fellow Jews as neighbours. Therefore, legally speaking, it boiled down to being of the same caste, creed or race. Now the lawyer changed his question from, “What must I ...Contd. | | |
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