31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 10/26

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.”

In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, the Lord Jesus takes center stage. And he speaks to us directly, to you and to me. Do you want to know the secret to life? Do you desire to know what to do and how to act? The Lord Jesus tells us, and simplifies things very well: “Love your God with all your heart.”

Today I invite us all to ask ourselves this question: “Do I love God with all my heart?” It is good to sit with this question. I invite you do so, not from an initial place of negativity or feeling that we aren’t doing enough. Rather, let us place ourselves before the Lord, and sit in this spiritual space of asking how our relationship with God is. Do I desire to love the Lord more? Do I find perhaps something that is holding me back? Am I caught up with other distractions that take me away from this question?

It is not always easy to evaluate our relationship with God. And Jesus gives us another avenue that we might pursue: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” How is my heart doing with respect to these other loves? Am I loving my neighbor, my brother or sister, my father or mother? Am I also loving myself? I often feel surrounded by people, myself included, who are our harshest critics. Am I able to love myself the way that God loves me? Let us try to see ourselves and others the way that Jesus sees these people. He loved us so much, that he was willing to die for us.

Truly the only way to love God with all our heart and others as ourselves is by receiving the love that comes from God alone. How difficult it can be to experience in our hearts the love that God has for us! We all need to experience his gratuitous love that cannot be earned or merited, but is a free gift. Let us pray to the Lord that he would give us the grace to experience his love and inspire in our hearts a love for him, others and ourselves.

Patrick Travers, SCV