Homily for Ordinary Time – 31st Sunday Year B 2018
Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 12:28-34
Introduction
"Which is the first of all the commandments?" This question reminds me of a scene in an old Black and White Movie "The Bells of St. Mary's." Father O'Malley played by Bing Crosby helps a Catholic School girl named Patricia (Patsy) to work on an assignment for Sr. Benedict is played by Ingrid Bergman. She is writing an essay on the five senses. But with Father O'Malley's help, Patsy writes about the six senses, the sixth sense being common sense.
After naming the five senses, to see, to hear, to touch, to smell and to taste, she adds common sense. She says: "The most important is the last. The sixth sense is to be able to enjoy the five senses properly." Moreover, she goes on to say: "We see others, hear others, know others with our five senses. But how do we know ourselves? Through common sense. Common sense is an internal sense whose function is to differentiate between the senses' reports or to reduce these reports to the unity of a common perception."
Sr. Benedict knows that the high level reasoning in this essay is the inspiration of a much wiser person, Father O'Malley. She still gives Patsy an "A" anyway.
Scripture and Theology
A similar line of reasoning inspires Jesus to answer the question "Which is the first of all the commandments?" in the way he does. Perhaps the scholar of hte law expected Jesus to pick one of the Ten Commandments, such as “Thou shall have no other gods before me” or “Thou shall not commit adultery” or any one of the 613 commandments found in the Old Testament. But like Patsy picked common sense as the sense that guides all the other five senses, Jesus also picks a commandment, the eleventh commandment you might say, that underpins all others, guides them and gives them meaning.
He says: The first or the greatest commandment 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." But this answer was not original to Jesus. He simply went back to the tradition and quoted from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which is also our first reading today. He quotes the Shema prayer, recited by every Jewish man three times a day. It is comparable to Catholics reciting the "Our Father" daily. Jesus, a faithful Jew, knew the Shema.
What is ingenious and impressive about Jesus' answer is that he attached to this first commandment about love of God, a second one about love of neighbour. "The second is this" he says: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." And this commandment too he drew from the Old Testament, from Leviticus 19:18.
Like Patsy's sixth sense, it is love that summarizes the Ten Commandments.
- For when we keep the first three commandments, we are in fact loving God: by worshipping him alone, by not profaning his name and by keeping the Lord’s Day holy.
- And when we keep the last seven commandments, we are in fact loving our neighbour: by respecting one's parents, not killing, not committing adultery, not stealing, not giving false witness, not desiring other people’s property and other people’s spouses.
That is why Jesus concludes by declaring: “There is no other commandment greater than these."
Christian Life
Unlike the Ten Commandments, phrased in the negative, telling us what not to do, these two great commandments about love of God and neighbour, tell us what to do, they guide everything we do as Catholics. How do we go about doing this? How does knowing this double commandment of love help us live out our lives today? Let me offer three ways.
First, by making love the basis of all Christian life, Jesus is inviting us to see the Christian way as a religion of friendship and relationship, above all else. We do not follow laws just for the sake of compliance, but for the sake of a relationship with God and with one another. That is why for example, simply reciting prayers or going through the motions of liturgy, without any devotion to God is not true religion. No wonder the scribe who asked the question can conclude that loving God and neighbour "is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
I once heard a story about a married couple, who for years went to the opera. Several years into their marriage, however, the husband let it slip accidentally that he did not like opera at all. When the wife asked him, "why then did you go with me all these years?" he said: “I loved the opera, because you love the opera and I love you.” That is when the wife also said, “I too only went to the opera, because I thought you loved it and since I loved you, I had to love it.” They cancelled their season tickets, and found new ways to love each other.
And so, like this couple loved the opera, not in itself, but because they loved the person who loved it or who they thought loved it, we too must obey God's laws because we love God. In fact, that is the reason we must love that despicable neighbour that we are tempted not to like, the imperfect one, the different one, because God loves them and we love God.
Secondly, by making love the basis of all Christian life, we can more easily know those rare occasions when we must correctly and appropriately make an exception to the letter of the law. Jesus often does this himself, breaking Sabbath rules, in the spirit of serving the higher law of love. That is why the confessor, for example, might assure a penitent who missed Mass because she had to care for a sick child, that while she broke the letter of the law, she actually served the more foundational law of love.
A retired police officer that I know tells the story of when as a young officer back in the seventies, he pulled over a car that was speeding through this small town. But on approaching the car, he realized that in the back seat was the driver's pregnant wife whose water had broken; he was rushing her to the hospital. What did the police officer do? Did he write the driver a ticket for speeding? No. Instead he went back into his police car, turned on the sirens and lights, and gave the driver a police escort all the way to the hospital.
Finally, making love the basis of our Christian life allows us to combine what are often seen as separate and often competing loves, the love of God and the love of neighbour. Obviously loving God has a certain logical priority, that is why it is the first commandment; but the love of neighbour is intimately linked to the love of God. The second flows from the first and fleshes out the first. We often show our love for God in the way we treat his other children, our brothers and sisters.
St. Vincent de Paul expresses this intimate connection between the two loves when writing to the members of the religious community he founded. He says:
It is our duty to prefer the service of the poor to everything else and to offer such service as quickly as possible. If a needy person requires medicine or other help during prayer time, do whatever has to be done with peace of mind. Offer the deed to God as your prayer. Do not become upset or feel guilty because you interrupted your prayer to serve the poor. God is not neglected if you leave him for such service. One of God’s works is merely interrupted so that another can be carried out. So when you leave prayer to serve some poor person, remember that this very service is performed for God. . . .
Conclusion
As we heard in the gospel, the scholar of the law agreed with Jesus' teaching about the two loves. And so Jesus dismissed him saying: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” I would hope that at the end of every day, before we go to bed, after examining our day's life and finding it in observance of the two laws of love, we can hear the Lord whispering to each of us, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And then at the end of our lives, when we appear before him, like the GPS, he will say the to us: "You have reached your destination."
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