| Mark 12:28-34 |
In
today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel we hear a church leader (Scribe) ask Jesus
which the commandments is the most important. Jesus replies by quoting the
central Jewish prayer called the Shema which
is memorized by Jewish children:
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.
Jesus then adds to this commandment saying, the second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Inspired
by this passage Pope Benedict XVI in his
first encyclical writing spoke about how the message of Jesus is that love of
God and love of neighbor cannot be separated, you need both! Pope Benedict
writes:
If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot
see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in
him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others,
solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties”,
then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper”,
but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love
makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be
opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me…Love of God and love of
neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live
from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then,
of a “commandment” imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but
rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its
very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love.
This Week:
-Memorize
the Shema prayer and pray it together as a household.
-Go
out of your way to see the image of God in someone who frustrates/annoys you
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