The Greatest Commandment- October 26, 2008

This week's liturgy of the Word is about the greatest commandment ""You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." What does that really mean in a practical sense? How do I do it? Why is this the greatest commandment?

Reading 1
Ex 22:20-26

Thus says the LORD:
"You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry.
My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword;
then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.

"If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people,
you shall not act like an extortioner toward him
by demanding interest from him.
If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge,
you shall return it to him before sunset;
for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.
What else has he to sleep in?
If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."


Aliens and Slaves

What is this talk of "aliens" all about? Here we see the origin and purpose of the commandments. The purpose of the commandments is to remind us of our calling in life (to know, love, and serve the Lord.) The basic story of human history is this: God loves us, he made us, we screwed up, and now he is here to save us. In Exodus 20:2, the first thing God says as he introduces the commandments is, "I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me." In other words, I loved you by saving you from slavery. I want you to love me the same way I love you by being faithful. Don't cheat on me- "you shall have no other Gods." Before God commanded us to love him, he loved us first.

Is it a reasonable expectation for God to ask us to love him back? Is it reasonable for a loving wife to expect love back from her husband? Of course it's reasonable! God is making a very reasonable request of us here. And who wins anyway if we follow the commandments? EVERYONE wins! The essence of and purpose of all of God's commandments is this: God loves us with all of his heart, with all of his soul, and with all his mind. He wants us to love him back. How do we know that God loves us like that? We need only look at the cross. Jesus loved us with all of his heart which was pierced by a lance on the cross. He loves us with all of his soul because he lowered himself by becoming a frail, limited, human being. He loves with all of his mind because even though his human nature feared death (let this cup pass), he submitted his mind to the Father completely out of love for our little human souls. That's why the greatest commandment is the greatest commandment- God loves us, he wants to share in this love of his for eternity- including today, tomorrow at lunch time, and 10 minutes before we die- forever.

Justice

What a relief it is that God says he is compassionate and will hear our cries even when we are cold and in need of a cloak. It's quite comforting to know that if we are heartbroken like widows, or lonely like orphans, God will "surely hear our cry." God is "compassionate" as he says in this reading. But, that also means that God hears the cries of ALL of the people WE have "wronged". He hears the yearning of everyone WE have caused to cry. He hears the cries of the poor people WE have ignored all of our lives. Because God is perfectly loving, he is also just. He asks us to follow the commandments and he EXPECTS us to follow them. God knows what true love is, and he wants us to live it. The 2nd reading shows us how to do that.


Reading II
1 Thes 1:5c-10

Brothers and sisters:
You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord,
receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit,
so that you became a model for all the believers
in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth
not only in Macedonia and in Achaia,
but in every place your faith in God has gone forth,
so that we have no need to say anything.
For they themselves openly declare about us
what sort of reception we had among you,
and how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God
and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.

Paul pays a tremendous complement to the Thessalonians here. He calls them "a model for all the believers". A model for ALL believers?!! Wow! They must be doing something right! What is that SOMETHING that they did? They had become "imitators of us and of the Lord." The Gospel reading says that the greatest commandment is that "You shall love the Lord, your God,with all your heart,with all your soul", and your neighbor as yourself. The Thessalonians knew exactly how to obey that commandment- by imitating the Lord. That is what the commandments are- an invitation to imitate the Lord. It is such a powerful way to live and to love God and one another that Paul had "no need to say anything" (no need to preach) to the places where the Thessalonians' faith had traveled. What is faith? It is an adherence of man to God and a surrender of a person's will and intellect to God.2 The Thessalonians had faith. They turned away from their idols, joined themselves to God, and surrendered their will and intellect to God. If they had not done so, they would have looked just like any other community. Instead, of doing as everyone else did (worshiping idols), they imitated God. And what was the result? Their faith and their example evangelized people with such power that Paul didn't need to go anywhere that the Thessalonians had already gone. Let's move on to how we can obey the greatest commandment in a practical way.

Following The Greatest Commandment

We have already established that God first loved us and now he wants us to love him and one another as his great commandment says. Does that mean we have to all quit our jobs and become priests? Of course not. We must remember that salvation is not something that happens as one big event. It is more of a "daily" thing which requires persistence, as Luke would say. Yes, this sounds boring and even more difficult to follow this command every day, but that is our call. When we ponder whether or not we should do something, the answer is always available. Suppose I want to obey the greatest commandment. And let's say that I have to make an everyday choice. All I have to do is ask myself this: In making this choice, or taking this action, am I contradicting my call to love God with all of my being and my neighbor as myself?

Here is an example. Suppose, I want to download my favorite song off the internet. I can download it for free and illegally and not get caught. But in doing so, am I contradicting my call to love God with all of my heart and my neighbor as well? First of all, by stealing, I am disobeying God and telling him that I like music more than obeying him (his commandments). By stealing from the musician (my neighbor) I am clearly not loving my neighbor. Now, this method of discernment is not going to be helpful with decisions like what color to dye your hair, but with the important decisions in life, God's greatest commandment and the our call to love our neighbors as ourselves will assist us on the way to heaven if we allow it to.

Real Life

For the last year, I lived as a missionary on a 640-acre ranch. The people I lived with were full-time unpaid missionaries. They never once tried to evangelize me or lecture to me about the faith. Rather, every time I saw them, they treated me in a loving way. I was continually amazed at their self-giving, self-sacrificing love. It wasn't long before I loved them right back. After all, how can you not love someone who loves so sincerely and so beautifully? I began to realize that this love with which they loved me came from their shared faith in God. It made me want to get closer to God. So, they evangelized me without using words.

I noticed that they took God's commandments very seriously. When one of God's commandments were inconvenient for them, they still obeyed. Their faithfulness to God and his greatest commandment were instrumental in evangelizing and saving my soul.

God loves us!

1- Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45; 1 Timothy 2:6
2- CCC 150, and CCC 143

Gospel
Mt 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."