📖 Homily Today

The Cloak Before Sunset

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, tucked into today's first reading from Exodus is a small detail that is easy to miss. If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge for a loan, you must return it before sunset. Why? Because, the Lord says, "this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body. What else has he to sleep in?"

Think about that. The God who parted the Red Sea, who thundered on Sinai, is paying attention to whether a poor man shivers through the night. And then comes the line that should stop us in our tracks: "If he cries out to me, I will listen; for I am compassionate."

That is the God Jesus is speaking about in today's Gospel. A scholar of the law asks Him a test question: which commandment is the greatest? There were hundreds of commandments in the Law, and the rabbis loved to debate them. Jesus answers simply. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these two, He says, hang the whole law and the prophets.

My friends, notice that Jesus was asked for one commandment, and He gave two. He refuses to separate them. They are like the two beams of the Cross: the vertical beam reaching up to God, the horizontal beam stretching out to our brothers and sisters. Take either away, and you no longer have a cross.

Saint Augustine put it beautifully. He taught that love of God comes first in the order of commanding, but love of neighbor comes first in the order of doing. In other words, we prove our love for the God we cannot see by how we treat the neighbor we can see. Pope Benedict XVI echoed this when he wrote that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable; they form a single commandment.

Exodus also gives us a reason for this love: "You were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt." Israel was to remember what it felt like to be powerless, and then God showed up. Every one of us has been there. We have known our own Egypt: grief, illness, loneliness, failure. And God heard our cry. The love we give others is simply the overflow of the mercy we ourselves have received.

That is what Saint Paul praises in the Thessalonians. They "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." Their faith did not stay private; it became so visible that, Paul says, word of it spread everywhere. Their love made the Gospel believable.

So, dear friends, let me ask a simple question. Who in your life is waiting for their cloak before sunset? Who is cold tonight, not always for lack of a blanket, but for lack of a phone call, a visit, a word of forgiveness, a bit of patience? Perhaps it is a widowed neighbor, an immigrant family new to our parish, a coworker carrying a burden no one notices, or someone in your own home.

This week, choose one person, just one, and return their cloak. Do one concrete act of love before the sun sets on your good intentions. And as you do it, offer it to God. That is how the two commandments become one.

In a few moments, Christ will give us His very self in the Eucharist. He does not hold anything back from us; He covers our poverty with His own Body and Blood. The Catechism reminds us that the Eucharist commits us to the poor. We cannot receive the Lord who gives Himself completely and then walk out unchanged.

So let us come to this altar to be loved, and then go forth to love. For the God who notices a poor man's cloak notices us too, and He is compassionate. Amen.

Sources Consulted - St. Augustine, *Tractates on the Gospel of John*, Tractate 17 - Pope Benedict XVI, *Deus Caritas Est* (2005), nos. 16–18 - *Catechism of the Catholic Church*, nos. 2055, 2196, 1397 - St. Thomas Aquinas, *Catena Aurea* on Matthew 22 - Pope Francis, Angelus Address, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 25, 2020) - Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., *The Gospel of Matthew* (Sacra Pagina) - *The New Jerome Biblical Commentary* (Exodus; 1 Thessalonians) - USCCB, NABRE readings and notes for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A