Oct 29 Sun
One the Pharisees, a lawyer, asked Jesus: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the prophets.”
Every Jew learned the ‘Shema’ by heart (“Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One and you shall love the Lord …”). They knew but apparently it didn’t reach their hearts. They knew a lot but they did not love much.
Like them, many people forget that God did not ask them to ‘know Him with all their understanding’ but to “love Him with all their hearts.” We have been given a limited capacity for understanding but an almost unlimited capacity for loving. Not all of us can be ‘wise’ but we all can and should be ‘lovers’. All the commandments are just one: Love. Spread the word: God is a beggar of love. He gives everything and the only reward He asks for is love.
All the time that we spend without loving God is wasted. A priest found a gravestone in a cemetery with the inscription: “Here lies So‑and‑So, who died at the age of 90 but did not live more than three years.”
When he asked the meaning of it, they told him it belonged to a man who converted to the love of God when he was 87. So, he wanted to leave written in stone that only those years he spent loving God were the years he was ‘alive’.
St Josemaría told a similar story. Visiting the Cathedral of Valencia, he came across the tomb of a venerable old priest. They explained to him that, when the old priest was asked how many years he had lived, he would reply with great conviction, in his Valencian dialect, ‘Poquets’, ‘Very few! For he only considered worth mentioning the years he had spent in love with God.
Moreover, we often fail, in our love of neighbor. Yet Christ says that this commandment is like the first. Love of neighbor is an essential part of our obligations toward God. If we fail in this, we fail in our love for God, for we refuse to carry out this sacred duty. If we do not recognize our neighbor as our brother, we do not recognize God as our Father, and we do not love him. As St. John puts it: “Anyone who says ‘I love God’ and hates (does not love) his neighbor is a liar’ (1 Jn.3: 20).”
Mary, my Mother, help me to express to all that the time we spend without loving God and neighbor, is wasted time; that the quality of life is not measured in years but in the intensity of love.
Image: The Jewish Shema with its pronunciation.
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