Sunday, November 3rd, 2024 – Thirty - first Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B Readings: Deuteronomy 6:2-6, Psalm 18 “I love you, Lord, my strength”, Hebrew 7:23-28, Mark 12: 28b-34

                                            WITH ALL YOUR HEART
 
“One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ 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.”
 
     Love is a very serious matter; that is why it is natural to take it on fully and totally: “You shall love with all your heart”. Why with “all”? Because love cannot bear limits or be measured. You cannot love “a little”. That’s why St Bernard insisted that “The measure of love is to love without measure.”
 
Brothers and Sisters,
 
1. This totality is what measures our happiness and the value of our life; only in love can man rescue his life from capsizing. Jesus speaks of the heart, soul, and strength because it implies all our capacity of understanding, all our emotional strength, all our dynamism of acting. When love for God and neighbor is like this, it alone is enough for us. As Saint Augustine says: “Love and do as you will.” Love is total in another sense: it embraces all of Christian morality and Christian spirituality. The other virtues are only aspects of charity; if we practice them without charity, they become sterile. Self-giving, generosity, obedience, and poverty become authentic values only when they are ways of loving.
 
2. The greatest and most consequential word a father can speak to his son is: “I love you”. Love is beyond what is human or terrestrial; it is God’s initiative. C.S. Lewis, in Four Loves, writes, speaking of charity, “natural Gift-love is always directed to objects which the lover finds in some way intrinsically lovable …. But Divine Gift-love in the man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior, and the sneering.”
 
3. Today, Christians ask about their identity: What does it really mean to be Christian? What is most important? Jesus did not respond with the first commandment, but rather with the first two, which together form but one commandment. This is the novelty. It’s not about two commandments in a hierarchical order, but one sole commandment. What’s important is not the order, but the logic: The love God has for us is the source of our love for him and our neighbor. We want to be loved for our intelligence, beauty, generosity, honesty, and efficiency. When we see someone offering us supreme love and charity, this produces an incredible impact. Receiving is harder and perhaps more meritorious than giving.
 
Just like the scribe of the Gospel, we must ask ourselves again, “What is most important? What truly saves our lives, gives true peace to our conscience, remains after the fleetingness of human life?” With this, being brothers and sisters is not difficult. Is it so difficult to leave in each brother or sister that crosses our path a token of love, kindness, respect, appreciation for their dignity, encouragement, and commitment, to the construction of a more human and fraternal world? It will be difficult, but it is essential, primary, first, because “to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
Source: ePriest.com / Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests