- Mark 12:28-34
- The Greatest Commandment
OTHER HOMILY SOURCES from Passionists
2020 Daily Scripture, June 4, 2020
The Core of our Faith
Today’s two Scripture selections combine to offer us a much-needed reminder of the core of our Christian faith: Love. Pure and simple: Love. Love received…Love lived…love shared.
In the Gospel selection from St. Mark one of the Scribes comes to Jesus and asks Him the truly basic question: “Which is the first of all the commandments?” No doubt this is thequestion which goes to the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry. Interestingly, Jesus’ response cites the statement from the Book of Deuteronomy: love God with your whole being…AND He joins to it the corresponding statement from the Book of Leviticus: love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus combines the two commandments into one: the love of God, neighbor, and self, go hand in hand.
The first reading from 2 Timothy sees St. Paul putting the words of Jesus into practice. Love is unselfish. Love involves sacrifice, a dying to self, a genuine living witness in both word and deed. Love is about life, a sharing of God’s life – a positive spirit of energy and vitality that transforms both people and situations…even suffering and death!
Application to life today is encouraged by the Responsorial Psalm from today’s Eucharist. Based on Psalm 25, it prays: “Teach me your ways, O Lord.” That prayerful request should be on our lips these days as we face the challenge of COVID-19 and the tension and destructive violence resulting from the recent racially related human tragedies. We prayerfully call upon Jesus Crucified to help us LOVE as He loves, in both word and deed, in good times and tragic times. Our love for God intimately involves a down-to-earth love for neighbor and self…as imperfect as we each are.
Jesus: May the Great Commandment of Love motivate each of us and our needy world this day!
Fr. John Schork, C.P. is the Vocation Director for Holy Cross Province. He lives at St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.
passionist.org/daily-scripture-june-4-2020/
2021 Daily Scripture, June 3, 2021
It has been called ‘the golden rule’ and indeed it is. In one unique combination of ancient wisdom Jesus sums up the entire Law in a prophetic manner and bequeaths to all his followers the key to life.
What God wants from us – far more than ritual or material offerings, is the gift of love. Perhaps this should not surprise us unduly, after all we are made in God’s own image and likeness and God is love. While it is not possible for us to fully describe God, we learn of God’s nature and deepest desires from Jesus words, lived example and witness to us.
In this light we can understand that the essence of God’s life is relationship. This deep reality is embedded in creation itself (witnessed even at a subatomic level where matter becomes particles in relationship to each other) and seen in all life that we know (patterns of relationship in nature and the environment and most clearly in the human person).
We are relational beings, made for communion with one another. In the vision of Jesus this relational circle is widened to incorporate our relationship with God.
To live a life committed to others and to their care, to exercise a nurturing stewardship of the earth, to seek to go beyond ourselves not just in exploration but in sacrificial loving of another – al this is but expression of the innate desire to form union that God has placed within us.
For Jesus to speak of loving with al one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength is for him to name the spectrum of human capacity and to suggest we orient our entire being towards love of God and others.
In saying this Jesus knows too that God extends love to us in the same way. God’s love for us is likewise a total gift of self to us. God’s love is endless, forgiving, nurturing, sacrificial and conveys joy and grace in abundance.
We are attracted to this love at our deepest levels. While some do not see the source and creator of such love and do not acknowledge God, they nevertheless experience the warmth of God’s love (and thus God’s presence) in the world. This is our task then – to be the conduit of God’s love as it seeps into human environment. When we love our neighbour, we shar in the mission of God in our world – a mission revealed by Jesus and continued under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
This is the reign of God. Let us not live far from it.
Fr. Denis Travers, C.P., is a member of Holy Spirit Province, Australia.
passionist.org/daily-scripture-june-3-2021/
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