XXXI Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Dt 6:2-6
Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
Heb 7:23-28
Mk 12:28b-34

If today’s Gospel sounds a little bit repetitive then you are paying attention.  The first reading and the Gospel reading are usually related to some degree and in cases like these, it’s almost an exact quotation of the scriptures in the Old Testament.  This makes my job a little bit easier because there’s less to cover!!

What is so special about this repeated passage of scripture?  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.  This is known as the “Shemah!!”, which means “ to hear or listen”.  This prayer and proclamation in the Jewish scriptures is perhaps the most important – most central piece of their faith, and likewise for us too.  These two Great Commandments offer a simple distillation of the Faith: it’s bite size!  But note the following verses instructing further:

Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. 

Observant Jews will take this to heart and truly follow these instructions, in some cases literally.  They pray this verse in daily morning and evening prayers.  In ancient times they would write the scripture verse on parchment and put it inside little boxes to wear on their foreheads and arms.  In more modern times, one would literally have this verse attached to the doorpost of their houses to remember that the Lord is God, the Lord is one, and that they will love Him with their complete self.

What I find so beautiful about some of these practices is how much the Jewish people tried to live out the faith: to have such a need to live with the Word of God, the Scriptures, and know the importance of God’s sacred word in their lives.  It is not enough with just knowing that God is one and that we should love Him, but rather that knowledge should transform and flow outward into a living faith.  They knew that they were God’s people before they were the people of their conquerors: be it the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greeks, or anyone else.  They were Jewish before anything else.

The beauty of our Catholic faith is no different.  Everybody should know the two great Commandments:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Great sound bites, especially in our day and age where people are asking for quick answers for everything; but like most sound bites, this is not enough.  These two commandments presuppose that you already know and are already morally living all the other details of the faith.  Do you know all the reasons for our Catholic morals?  Why do we have moral problems with abortion and using artificial birth control?  Why do we believe that there should be preferential option for the poor and immigration reform, why are we against the death penalty?  What does “health care reform“ really entail?  You can give the short answer: because we follow these two commandments.  And that answer would be correct, but I believe also incomplete – almost to some like a “because I said so” kind of answer.  “Because I said so” hardly works on kids, why should it work on you or your peers?

I challenge those who don’t know why abortion or using artificial birth control is wrong or any other controversial moral issues to start reading the Catechism, to read our Church documents and teachings on why we believe such things.  Chances are, your non-Catholic friend, coworker, or family member, do not have the expertise and the thorough research that the Church has gone through to reach a complete answer to a particular moral issue.  They would not be good sources to start with:  would you ask a Muslim to try and understand the Jewish faith?  Of course not!  Ignorance about our Catholic faith abounds, and this includes Catholics too!  If you can sum up the rationality for why something is wrong in the Catholic Church in a single sound bite, an Internet meme, a pithy or snarky little quote, or arguments summed up nicely on a single sheet of paper – you can be certain that the issue has not been well thought through or that the answer is incomplete.  When you do your homework - the answer may surprise you: it’s not a bunch of old fogies in Rome pontificating and trying to demean women or any other demographic!!  What you will find is the fundamentals of those two great commandments elucidated or expressed in its fullest sense.  What you will find is something beautiful and fitting; and will resonate in your soul and help you to live the fullest expression of your humanity.  You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.  

Election Day is right around the corner, and I know that many of you will be casting your vote.  And if you are like me, I am really tired of the media and the political games; and just want this to be over with.  I know that it has certainly led to some heated discussion among friends and family.  But it is your civic duty to vote, just like it is your civic duty to go on jury duty (no matter how much you dislike it).  As American citizens you can vote and should vote – there is nothing stopping you.  As Americans, when you make your decision to cast your vote, I would like you to consider this:  There is a citizenship that holds greater precedence than your American one or any other nationality for that matter.  That citizenship is, of course, the citizenship in the Kingdom of God.  You are a son or daughter of God before you are a citizen of the United States.

First and most fundamentally, being a citizen in God’s Kingdom means knowing, being well informed, and practicing the Catholic faith before, or as, one engages the world around them.  It means to have that intimate relationship with our Lord.  The Jewish people knew this.  They knew that they had to keep their faith close to their person, living it out daily or else the tides of the pagan world would wash them away.  They knew that the faith and being God’s people was what sustained them as a nation.  We come here today with our different cultures and backgrounds, legal or illegal, white, black, yellow, brown, and everything in between.  What we share first and foremost is our humanity and our common Sonship in God – we are Children of God before all else.  If our nation: our government, our leaders, or the society in general is indeed leading people down a path of destruction and moral relativism, it will be – if not already – a dark time for us as Christians.  As civil and religious liberties, human dignity, and natural law are all on the line this election year, we must vote based upon the issues most dear to us as Catholic Christians before our own personal agendas and biases.  Those issues should be informed and connected to the beliefs of our Catholic Christian Faith and go beyond the boundaries of ideologies of political parties.  And as much as we love our country and fulfill all our civic duties, we will continue to pray for our country and the world no matter the outcome; as that is what our faith calls us to do.  We also take solace and comfort that our ultimate home is with God and that we ultimately belong to His Kingdom.

Today we hear the two great commandments:  Loving the Lord our God and loving our neighbor as ourselves; two bite size commandments with a lot of substance.  These two great commandments are the summation of the 10 Commandments and from these come the particular moral teachings that we practice today and will provide the template for morals in the future as advancements are made in technology.  Moral teachings are related and never formulated in a vacuum; and as citizens, sons and daughters of God, desiring to follow Him, we must seek to discover answers to those questions that the world proposes.  The Scriptures proclaim “Hear O Israel” to us – that we, as Sons and Daughters of God, are the new Israel and we are to hear God’s Word resonate in our hearts – that we are His people, His citizens in living out these two great commandments.  When our faith becomes integrated into our life, when our faith is not something we do on Sunday but something that is lived and breathed, when our faith inspires and guides our actions we will know truly in our hearts what Jesus declared to the scribe: “You are not far from the kingdom of God”.