16 October 2025 – Thursday of the 28th week of Ordinary Time
Homily
In Luke's Gospel, all of Jesus' teaching takes place in the context of a struggle between the kingdom of God, whose coming Jesus announces, and the forces of evil, represented first by the tempter in the desert, then by the increasingly strong opposition that the Pharisees and Scribes offer to Jesus, until His long journey to Jerusalem, where the forces of evil seem to have triumphed over Him when He is put to death and laid in the tomb, awaiting the final victory of the Son of God on the morning of the Resurrection.
In the text we have just read, Jesus continues the long list of reproaches against the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, much of which we read yesterday.
And all these reproaches are summed up in one terrible sentence: "Woe to you, teachers of the law. You have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves have not entered, and those who were trying to enter, you have prevented."
The knowledge of God is at the heart of all Revelation, both in the Old and New Testaments. Human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, are capable of knowing Him and therefore also of loving Him. But this knowledge is given to them – it is a gift. Here on earth we see God through the images we have of Him. In the age to come, we will see Him face to face. But even here on earth, we already have authentic knowledge of Him through love. A love that is a pure gift, since this love has been placed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. A love that is manifested through fidelity to His commandment – which is itself first and foremost the commandment of love, which sums up all the others.
During the temptation of Adam and Eve at the beginning of Genesis, the tempter wants to convince them that they can seize this knowledge that God, according to the tempter, wants to reserve for Himself alone. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for having taken away the key to knowledge, replacing love with the observance of a multitude of commandments and practices.
During this Eucharist, let us ask ourselves to what extent we ourselves penetrate the mystery of the knowledge of God, through fidelity to His commandment of love of God and neighbor, and to what extent we close ourselves off to this knowledge – and at the same time block access to it for our brothers and sisters – whenever we fail to observe this fundamental commandment of love for God and our neighbor.
Armand Veilleux