In the Gospel of Matthew, we read that a “[scholar of the law] tested him by asking, ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments’” (Matthew 22:35-40).
Of the Ten Commandments that the Lord God gave to Moses, the first three commandments cover love of God: “I am the Lord your God: You shall not have strange Gods before me. . . You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. . . Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.” The remaining seven commandments cover love of neighbor: “Honor your father and mother. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.”
Then today, as we enter the first week of Lent, we encounter the scene of the Last Judgment in which Jesus teaches us how love is concretely expressed. Bishop Robert Barron reminds us that we do not take “our money, our social status, or our worldly power into the next world; but we do take the quality of our love.” Moreover, the “absolute love for God is not in competition with a radical commitment in love of our fellow human beings. . . Thomas Aquinas would state it this way: to love God is to love, necessarily, whatever participates in God, and this is to say the entire world.” It is as Jesus tells us in today’s passage, titled the “Judgment of Nations,” saying: “Amen, I say to you, what you did (or did not) do for one of these least ones, you did (or did not) do for me.”
The Catholic Church codified this passage from the Gospel of Matthew as the “corporal and spiritual works of mercy.” The corporal works of mercy challenge us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the prisoners, bury the dead, and give alms to the poor. Likewise, the spiritual works of mercy challenge us to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish the sinner, comfort the sorrowful, forgive injuries, bear wrong patiently, and pray for the living and the dead. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy start in the family, the domestic church, where children learn charity and love. From there, charity expands outward to parishes and communities, food pantries, and Mobile Loaves and Fishes.
As we continue our journey in the desert with our Lord Jesus Christ, let us take Bishop Barron up on this suggestion that we consider “doing an examination of conscience at the end of each day, and use as [our] criterion” found in the passage on the Judgment of Nations, today’s Gospel reading, using the Catholic Church’s corporal and spiritual works of mercy to fulfill the Lenten practice of almsgiving.
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