From the responsorial psalm: “If only my people would hear me, and Israel walk in my ways, I would feed them with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them. I am the Lord your God: hear my voice.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (Mk 12:28-34, today’s readings)
Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
There was nothing new in Jesus’ response to the scribe’s question, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” In reciting part of the Shema, still a part of daily Jewish prayer, Jesus focuses on worship of the Lord alone and the command to love him. Alongside this, Jesus brings the love of the first commandment into the second: love of neighbor as oneself. The two go together, extending God’s love of his people and making it central as the foundation of all human relationships. Jesus makes clear that willing the good of the other comes through knowledge of the Father’s love for us—he loved us first—which allows us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
God, let me take in and live out the very same words Jesus spoke to the scribe. To love you with all my heart and soul and mind and strength seems an unattainable commandment, even more so to love others as I love myself. Yet, let me see the wisdom in the scribe’s response. You alone are the Lord, and to follow these two commandments “is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices”; that is, worth more—infinitely more—than any other thing or person or ideal that I might make into an idol. Lord, you say through Hosea, to say no more to the work of my hands, “Our god.” Give me the grace to receive your gift of love and give it away for the sake of your glory. “I have humbled him,” you say, “but I will prosper him.” Feed me, Lord, in my shortcomings; feed me with the best of your gifts, and fill me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.