Friday of the First Week of Lent
"Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift." Jesus is not offering some radical new teaching about the need to pay attention to our human relationships. I would even say that this is not just a reference to the urgings of the many Old Testament prophets who insisted that failing to treat others properly creates a stain on our worship. Rather, Jesus is reminding us of something that we all instinctively know about love, but something we sometimes ignore when thinking about God.
Practical experience shows that love is “triangular”. Take for instance a parent of two siblings. The parent loves these siblings and the siblings love the parent. Yet if the siblings are at each other’s throats, that damages their relationship with the parent. What parent doesn’t hate to see their children fighting? Similarly, when the siblings are treating each other lovingly, that brings joy to the parent; the parent even grows in affection for the children. It is the same when the child notices conflict between the mother and the father: it hurts the parents’ relationship with the child. It’s even the same with friends: friends don’t like to see their friends fighting amongst each other.
This triangularity of love is no less applicable in our relationship with God. If I am going to love God well, in a way that is beyond mere lip service, then I need to love those whom God loves. That means that my relationship with God will suffer if I do not love my neighbor, my brother, the person right in front of me, or the stranger. This call to love comes as no surprise when we remember that God is our Father. And any good Father wants to see his children showing love to each other.