NOVEMBER 4th. THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Mark 12:28-34

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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The greatest commandment exhorts us to love God with all of our hearts, souls, mind and strength. Don Fabio says that by reflection on this commandment we can discover the complexity and beauty of the human person. To love with all of our heart signifies to stop pursuing the small, futile things to which we dedicate our lives, and instead make God the centre of our existence. To love with all of our mind means to stop nourishing our thoughts with the trash, distorted images, consumerist philosophies and superficial values that have become the daily diet of our minds. Instead we must cultivate in our minds the beautiful and varied things that are worthy of God. The scribe in the Gospel understands Jesus words, but he does not take the step from understanding the Kingdom to entering the Kingdom. Help us Lord to cross the threshold between understanding and action! Help us to listen to you and dedicate our hearts to you, nourishing our minds and souls with things that are worthy of you, and to fill our days with humble acts of love.

Do we put God in first place every day in our lives?

A scribe approaches Jesus and poses the classic question, “Which is the greatest of all the commandments?” The answer would have fairly evident, since, as a Jew, the scribe would have repeated a number of times each day, “Listen Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you must love him with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” We have heard these words many times, but do we ever really think about what they mean? This is presented to us as the greatest of the commandments, which means that whatever great achievements we think we might have accomplished in life, if we have not fulfilled this commandment then we have done nothing. If we do not put God in first place every day in our lives, then everything we do lacks substance.

The first step every day is to stop and listen to the Lord

The first words of the saying are crucially important, “Listen Israel!” The first thing that must be done is to turn our attention to the Lord. The word “obedience” is derived from the verb “to listen”. The first thing that we are asked to do in life is to fix our attention completely on the Lord. We think we are completely free, with the liberty to do what we please, but we are wrong. Before we ever act, we have already given our attention to something; our interest and our motivation are already being pulled in certain directions. That is why it is essential to take stock of where our interests and attention are fixed, and to turn them back decisively to the Lord.

                When people ask for help, the first thing we have to tell them often is to listen to the Lord. When marriages are in difficulty, when lives have gone down tortuous complicated paths, the first thing that must be done is to stop and turn our attention to God. If we continue to do things as we have always done them; if we continue to operate out of the same mentality, then things will remain exactly as they are. I must open myself to doings things in a new way. I must be ready to leave behind my system of doings things and be prepared to be surprised by God’s way of doing things. I might think that I can live for my own goals, using my own principles, taking my own paths. But living life without being rooted in God leads nowhere. Often, the first thing that we need to do is to stop and be silent. In situations of difficulty, the first step towards a resolution is to start listening, stop absolutizing the “word” that we have inside, and open oneself to accept a different word.

There is only one God. We must place him above the other small things that take the place of God in our lives

We must open ourselves to God, recognizing that he is one – the only one necessary. He is the only one that has ultimate meaning, and by recognizing this we start to get our priorities right. In our daily lives, we lose ourselves in the pursuit of many small things, but there is only one great thing that is ultimately significant. If we do not purse that one great thing, then of what value is the possession of all the smaller things? We are asked thus to listen, to reorder our priorities through listening, and to make God the most important focus in our lives.

Love with all your heart: This means to give God THE central place in our lives

The greatest of the commandments reveals to us that the fundamental thing that we are called to do in life is to love. The relationship with God is not to be one of obligation or slavery, but one of love. Once we focus on what this love consists in, then we embark on a journey of discovery of the beauty of the nature of the human being. Firstly, we are to love with all of our hearts. The heart represents the centre of our very essence, the principle of the unity of our being. To love God with all of our hearts means to be attached to him with all of our being. Love is the only authentic kind of relationship that exists. If the relationship between friends is not one of authentic love, if the relationship between parent and child is not one of genuine love, then what kind of relationship is it?  If colleagues at work do not have a relationship built on genuine love, then what does the relationship consist in? Convenience? Utility? At the centre of our being, in this place we call the “heart”, if there is not the joy of encounter with God, then unfortunately, something else must be there. Solitude, darkness, love of unworthy things. How many of us have love for the wrong things in our hearts! This Gospel calls each of us to heal these mistaken tendencies and announces clearly that our hearts can be healed and priorities in our lives restored.

Love with all your soul: this means to open our entire psychological and mental apparatus to God

In Greek the word for “soul” is “psyche”. If this Gospel calls us to the healing of our hearts, it also announces the healing of our entire mental apparatus. The tendencies nowadays is to analyse endlessly the causes and the blames for our psychological neuroses and fixations. What is needed, first and foremost, is to open our minds to love God. It is only in the encounter with God that many things are pardoned and healed.

Love with all your mind: this is a call to hygiene of the mind, nourishing our ways of thinking with words, images and ideas that are worthy of God, instead of the rubbish that has become the daily diet of our minds.

The greatest commandment asks us to love God with our ways of thinking, with all of our minds. There are ways of thinking that are right and good, and there are ways of thinking that are mistaken. How do we nourish our minds? We persist in nourishing our minds with the greatest rubbish imaginable! When we feed our children, we make sure that the food is clean and of the highest quality. We don’t give them food off the ground. Yet, on an everyday level, we continue to feed our minds with trashy images, with superficial and distorted visions of the nature of the person and of human existence. We continue to watch, listen and talk about things that have the minimum of reason or depth behind them, drinking in the propaganda of crass consumerist philosophies. In the last century, the human being nourished his mind with mistaken ideologies that painted a false picture of history and humanity, leading to unimaginable evil and the destruction of human life. We fill our minds with rubbish and we are urgently in need of hygiene of the mind, of the things we cultivate with our minds.

Love with all your strength: this means dedicating ourselves completely to developing and increasing our capacity to love

“Love the Lord your God with all of your strength.” The human being is remarkable in the way that he can apply himself with all of his strength to particular tasks, even if that task is virtually worthless! What are you applying yourself to these days? Some people are highly professional in work but completely illiterate when they return home to their families. There are people who are extremely talented in the things of this world, but incapable of performing a genuine act of love, unwilling to develop their capacities to accomplish that which lasts forever.

We understand this Gospel. Are we willing to take the final step and act on it?

How many beautiful things we are called to in life! The greatness and the resoluteness that we are called to have in our hearts! The healing that we are called to accomplish in our souls! The beautiful and worthy ways of thinking that we are asked to cultivate! The most important part of this Gospel passage has yet to come. The scribe agrees with what Jesus says about love of God and love of neighbour and replies, “It’s true. What you say is really true!” Jesus tells him that he is not far from the Kingdom of God. In a well-known children’s game, one of the children says “hotter!” or “colder!” when the other child approaches or moves away from a hidden object. Being “hotter” is of no use at all in this game if the object is not eventually found. Jesus says “hotter!” to the scribe, but the only thing that matters is to arrive at the final destination. To be one step away from the Kingdom but not to enter into the Kingdom signifies to understand but not to obey. We can understand the beautiful things that this Gospel places before us, but we can still refuse to enter in. It would almost be better not to know them at all if in the end one refuses to enter. That the Lord might grant us the grace to launch ourselves across that threshold between understanding and doing! All that matters, despite all of our internal contradictions, is to try in small ways to take that step. Help us Lord this week - in our hearts, our souls, our thoughts, our actions - to cultivate small, humble, acts of love towards God.

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