22 August 2025 – Friday of the 20th week
Homily
In many societies, especially in Africa, solidarity within the extended family is an extremely important aspect of the social structure. In fact, this solidarity is essential for survival. Living conditions may be very simple and frugal, but no one generally lacks the essentials. When a woman becomes a widow and children are orphaned, they are taken care of by the extended family through a whole network of relationships. Similarly, strangers have a divine right to hospitality.
This entire social structure and network of relationships is often disrupted by the development of a modern urban lifestyle. This leads to poverty and slums, with people moving from one city to another in search of a less impoverished life.
Something similar happened in Israel after the settlement in the Promised Land. People who had shared everything among themselves during their nomadic existence began to establish small private empires. Economic difficulties resulted from the transition from a nomadic economy to an urban economy, where the weak became more vulnerable. Strangers, widows, orphans and many poor people died of hunger without anyone coming to their aid.
It was in this context that the preaching of some of the great prophets and their call for social justice were heard. In the Book of Ruth, it is the attitude of Ruth, the Moabite, faithful to her mother-in-law, that is given as an example.
Something similar happened several centuries later, in the time of Saint Benedict, when the stability of the Roman Empire was shattered by the invasion and settlement in the Empire of numerous tribes from the North and East. It was in this new context that Saint Benedict asked his monks to welcome strangers and the poor as Christ would. And Saint Gregory, in his Life of Saint Benedict, tells us of several situations in which Benedict gave the poor all the resources of the monastery, down to the last drop of oil.
All this provides us with a broader context in which to understand the double precept of love in today's Gospel. We are called to love God and our neighbour with all our heart, soul and mind; that is, with a love that is both tender and intelligent and that involves the whole being of the one who loves and all aspects of the life of the person loved.
Today, as in the time of the prophets, in the time of Jesus and in the time of Saint Benedict, the world is undergoing radical and rapid changes. Millions of people are refugees or emigrants in foreign countries; and even within the more industrialised countries, the weak and the small are the victims that development itself sacrifices on the altar of progress. Jesus does not call us to a vague and sentimental attitude of sympathy; he invites us to an intelligent love that engages the heart, soul and mind, and takes into account all the needs, both material and spiritual, of the least among us.
Let us seek in the Eucharist — the sacrament of love — the source of a love that is deeper, truer, more concrete and real, both towards one another and towards the least among us.