Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today I will speak to you about our Christian commitment to share the love of God with others. This morning, the First Reading was taken from the Book of Malachi. This Book from the Old Testament begins with God expressing His Divine love for Israel. But as we have heard, God's love was not being returned to Him.
Love is meant to be given and received.
From the reading, we heard how God was angry with Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, especially with the priests who had been offering defective animals as sacrifices. Rather than presenting the best of their animals as sacrifices to God, they offered the blind, the lame and the sick animals. The priests were told how they had fallen from the grace of the Lord God. Not only had the priests offered secondary sacrifices to God, but they had also become sinful in their daily lives, walking away from the righteousness of the Lord. In their sinfulness, they had influenced others to turn to sin.