THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

 31^st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Mark 12b-34.

AIM:  To show that God=s law embodies his love; and that our obedience to his law is our response to that love. 

At the heart of the religion which Jesus learned from Mary and Joseph, and from the synagogue school in Nazareth, were the Ten Commandments. Like all laws, they require interpretation. The command to Akeep holy@ the Sabbath by refraining from work, for instance, requires a definition of what kind of work is forbidden on the Sabbath. Over time the interpretation of the commandments became lengthy. Hence the rabbis, who provided these interpretations, vied with one another to formulate a Agreatest@ or most important law that would sum up everything God commanded. One of the best known summaries in Jesus= day was that of the Rabbi Hillel. He said he could state the whole of God=s law while standing on one foot. AWhat you yourself hate, do not to your neighbor. That is the whole of God=s law. Everything else is commentary.@

This search for a summary of the law was behind the question put to Jesus in today=s gospel about Athe first of God=s commandments.@ In reply Jesus cites the passage from Deuteronomy which we heard in our first reading. This is the Hebrew prayer AShemáh Israél B Hear, O Israel@, still recited today by devout Jews thrice daily. Two things are noteworthy about this central text of Jewish religion.

First, it presents what we owe God as a response to what God has already done for us. The first phrase, AHear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!@ refers to the special relationship between God and his people. This one God, the text is saying, is our God because he has chosen us from all other nations on earth to be his own. The duty to love God is the consequence of God=s prior choice of this people. AThe Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God@ with all your heart, soul and strength.

This view of the law as our response to God=s prior action is explicit in the Ten Commandments. They are given twice over in the Old Testament: first in Exodus, again in Deuteronomy. Both times they are preceded by God=s declaration: AI, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery@ (Exod. 20:2; Deut. 5:6). The commandments which immediately follow describe the people=s grateful response to what God has already done for them in liberating them from slavery. 

The Deuteronomy text cited by Jesus in the gospel is noteworthy for a second reason as well. It puts love at the heart of religion. AThe Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God ...@ We sometimes hear that the Old Testament presents a God of law, the New Testament a God of love. That is misleading. While law is central in the Old Testament, it presents God=s law as an expression of his love B a gift granted to his chosen people, and not to others.  (Cf. Deut. 4:6-8)

And while the New Testament does emphasize God=s love, he remains a God of law. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, Jesus says that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Mt. 5:7). And at the Last Supper he gives his apostles Aa new commandment: Love one another@ (John 13:34). Both parts of the Bible proclaim the same God. If God=s self-disclosure is fuller in the New Testament, this is because in it God comes to us through his Son. As we read in the opening verse of the letter to the Hebrews: AIn times past, God spoke in fragmentary and varied ways to our fathers through the prophets; in this, the final age, he has spoken to us through his Son ...@

The rabbis who interpreted the Ten Commandments also taught that disobeying one was equivalent to disobeying all. There is an echo of this in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says: A... whoever breaks the least significant of these commandments ... shall be called least in the kingdom of God@ (Mt. 5:19). By making love the center of God=s law, however, Jesus moves beyond this tradition.  Love of God and neighbor are the heart of Jesus= summary of the law in today=s gospel. When his questioner says that love is better than Aall burnt offerings and sacrifices@ B better, that is, than formal worship B Jesus tells him: AYou are not far from the kingdom of God.@ With these words Jesus is saying that God=s kingdom is present wherever love is present. 

But how can we tell when this love, which is the heart of God=s law, is truly present? Jesus= answer is clear. The test of our love for God is whether we love our neighbor. (Cf. 1 John 4:20) And love for our neighbor is genuine only if it means sharing with others the unmerited love that God lavishes on us. This is the love for neighbor which God commands in his law. 

Human laws command us to respect the rights of others. Obedience to such laws, however, is always impersonal, formal, cold. I can respect your rights without having any human contact with you. Hence the enormous amount of loneliness in our society. Mother Teresa called loneliness Athe worst disease of modern times.@ 

There is only one cure for loneliness: love. And the source of all love is God, for, as the first letter of John tells us, AGod is love@ (1 Jn. 4:9). God=s law can command this love, as human laws cannot, because at the heart of God=s law is the world=s greatest love: the love of God for all he has made. Or, as Pope Benedict XVI says: ALove can be >commanded= because it first been given@ (Deus caritas est, 14 end).

We often experience conflict between love for God and love for others. For Jesus, however, there is no conflict. Love for others is the expression and test of our love for God. AAs often as you did it for one of my least brothers,@ Jesus says in his great parable of judgment, Ayou did it for me@ (Mt. 25:40).

Our world is full of schemes for serving people in need. In western countries they are called social welfare, or the welfare state. Why do these efforts so often leave people still hungry, hurt, or lonely? Because they are not empowered by the love of God. All forms of do-goodism without love are cold. Too often they end by exploiting those they seek to serve and depriving them of their human dignity and freedom. That explains the ghastly failure of so many ambitious and well-intentioned schemes for human betterment in our world.

For all these failures despite the enormous amount of goodwill involved there is but one remedy: the unbounded love of God B the love which is a free gift, not a reward for services rendered: the love that will never let us go. We are here to receive that gift. And the One who gives us his love as a gift sends us out at the end of each Mass, to share his gift with others.