The pilgrimage is coming to an end, but on this Sunday, we take in the highlight of the trip, the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany. We leave Germany on Tuesday and arrive back home in Bismarck that evening, if all the fights work out!
In the frst reading today, we heard Moses telling the people that the Lord has written His laws and commandments into our hearts and that they are already in our mouths and that all we need to do is carry them out. In doing so we stay close to our God and He stays close to us. Jesus, the Word made fesh, speaks to us and gives us an example to follow, as He is Spirit and life. The scholar of the law in today’s Gospel clearly knows what he needs to do in order to inherit eternal life, follow God’s commandments and to love his neighbor as himself. But the scholar pushes Jesus further by asking “who is his neighbor?” What Jesus proposes is that our neighbor is really everybody we encounter in our daily lives, not just the people we like and want to be with, but also those that may be harder to like. Open your hearts and your entire self to God, and to His loving presence, and then you too can be a neighbor to all people.