Hearing The Word

A weekly newsletter delivering context and insight into the Sunday Gospels.

October 25, 2026

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,

they gathered together, and one of them,

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."



To Love God and To Love One Another



~Rev. Jordan J. Kelly, O.P.

Director of Music and Liturgy + Saint Patrick Catholic Church, Philadelphia, PA

In six short verses, today’s Gospel directs us to one of the most important realities of discipleship: faith without good works is meaningless; and, good works with out faith is equally meaningless.

The meaning of today’s Gospel begins in the first reading from the Book of Exodus, if you wrong the widow and orphan, my wrath will flare up against you. Jesus makes these words a reality.

Two significant realities begin the Gospel: Jesus silenced the Sadducees because of His preaching and teaching about the Resurrection. And secondly, The Pharisees, rather than engaging Jesus in a genuine conversation, decide to test Him. The Pharisees test Jesus because they are threatened by Him. The “test” they give to Jesus is to find out just how smart He really is. To pass this arbitrary test, Jesus must be able to sum up the teaching of the Talmud in the most succinct manner possible.

Of course, Jesus passes their sinister test in the most perfect way: He recites the Shema. But, He than teaches the meaning and impact of the Shema: it is not enough to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind; the love of the Lord must be out into action by loving the neighbor, in the way we love ourselves. As the late Fr. Francis Martin would quip, we must love from being egomaniacs to be neighbormaniacs.

It is normal to love God with affection, but to truly love Him our love for Him is rooted in obedience to His teaching and to all that He invites us – even loving our neighbor.

The Second Is Like

~Christine Eberle

Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic Church + Philadelphia, PA

For the last year, I’ve been writing a daily devotional for Loyola Press. 2028: A Book of Grace-Filled Days has a firm word limit: 150 words for each day of the liturgical year. (For perspective, that’s half the length of these “From the Pew” submissions.) Having to “write tight” has made me keenly aware of Strunk & White’s imperative: OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS. I’ve gotten very good—some might say ruthless—about trimming superfluous adjectives, adverbs, and even whole sentences to make my point before running out of space.

I think that’s what called my attention to Jesus’ transitional phrase in today’s Gospel.

After identifying the greatest commandment, he adds, “The second is like it.” Couldn’t he just have said “The second is . . .” and gone on to name the next commandment? Though a kneejerk editor might scratch out “like it” in the service of brevity, those two words are doing the heavy lifting in this passage. With that simple phrase, Jesus irrevocably binds the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. Loving our neighbor is like loving God, he insists. We show our love for God by how we love our neighbor. Full stop. Taken seriously, Jesus’ words are shocking—and challenging.

Most of us in the pews would say we love God. Yet Jesus refuses to let that love remain private. He ties it directly to the way we treat the people around us. Our faith is lived not only in prayer or at Mass, but in our daily encounters with others.

Call to mind one “neighbor” you dislike. It could be literally a person on your block who parks badly, lets their dog run loose, or blasts music after bedtime. But maybe it’s a relative or co-worker who gets on your last nerve, or a public figure who routinely enrages you. Ask Jesus to show you what it means to love them “as yourself.”

Perhaps that is the challenge of this Gospel: Jesus does not allow us to separate love of God from love of neighbor. The two commandments are “like” one another because they lead us toward the same goal—a heart that more closely resembles his.