Lord’s Day Reflection: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’

By Fr Edmund Power, OSB

The multiplication of the loaves is recounted by all four evangelists, and twice by Matthew and Mark. Today we have the first of Matthew’s two accounts, the feeding of the five thousand. The text opens with the declaration he saw a great throng; and he had compassion on them. It is that compassion or love that I want to reflect upon, in the light of the first and second readings.

The conclusion of chapter 8 of Romans is one of the most sublime passages of the New Testament and well merits a close meditation. It opens and closes with a verb that is laden with ambiguity: separate. Clearly, it has a neutral, literal meaning, but when we apply it to inter-personal situations, we realise how much pain it can convey: it lies at the heart of any kind of grief occasioned by loss. At the same time, it can also provide a relief: separation is sometimes necessary, but it is usually a compromise in the face of real reconciliation.

Paul creates an “inclusion” based on this verb. The rhetorical question, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? is answered at the end, (nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Between the first and second use of the verb, we have two chains of negativity, things that might be able to separate us: in the first, Paul lists seven possibilities, tribulation, distress, etc; in the second, he recites no less than ten circumstances, starting with death and life. The answer to the first chain is the resounding No of verse 37. The negation of the second chain is even more striking: each of the ten items is individually negated with the neither followed nine times by nor.

Between the two chains we have the pivotal declaration: through him who loved us. The love of Christ, the compassion of which the gospel speaks, negates any separation. This is conveyed even by the grammatical structure of the text: the two uses of the verb separate, are separated by the negation of separation by way of eleven explicit words.

I apologise for what may seem a rather pedantic reflection on this text. Its message is clear, however. Our union with Christ, our non-separation from him, is the work of the divine love, mentioned three times in the short reading. The “agape” of God manifested in Christ is what drives the compassion of today’s gospel, a compassion that results not in esoteric feelings, but in the concrete act of putting bread on the table for the hungry. The sheer gratuity or disinterest of this is proclaimed in the Isaiah reading: come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

The sad and cynical saw, “there’s no such thing as a free meal”, is negated by all three readings on this eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time in the year of Matthew.