Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel we have this beautiful convergence of old and new—the subtle fulfillment of the sacred law Israel. At the time of Jesus the Israelites had over 600 laws, and there was a desire to find a command that might summarize or act as a guiding principle. Thus we have a

well-meaning scribe asking Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commands?”

The Lord answers with the ancient Shema, a command given to the newly formed people of Israel by God through Moses, given after the revelation of the 10 commandments:

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.

At the heart of all the “rules” we Catholics tend to worry about lies this beautiful, ancient plea from Moses who spoke to the Lord “face to face, as one speaks to a friend”. And this scribe, looking himself into the face of that same God, hears it directly from His sacred mouth. And now over 3 millennia later WE hear the words once more from God, through the priest acting in persona Christi.

This moment is coupled with a great response by the scribe: To love God with all your heart...is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. How many burnt offerings and sacrifices do I offer our Lord in lieu of a loving heart? Like any good father towards his son, He loves when I do good and avoid evil, when I pray, come to Mass, or help my neighbor. Those are essential to our Christian lives. But what the Good Father waits for with anxious anticipation, what he can’t get enough of, are those simple loving gazes from my heart. And as our hearts are slowly transformed in this love, those burnt offerings of good works and prayer are also transformed into deeper and truer forms of worship.

Michael Gokie, SCV - Assistant Newman Director