If the thought crossed your mind that you heard today’s first and third
readings not very long ago, you were right. Very similar readings were
in last year’s cycle of readings, although last year we got Matthew’s
version of the Great Commandment and this year we got Mark’s. But is
this overkill? It might seem so, but I prefer to think that the Church
considers this teaching on the primacy of love of God and neighbor so
important that it bears regular repetition. And who could argue with
that!
The familiar passage from Deuteronomy was bread
and butter for every devout, believing Jew and the very heart of the
Torah, the Law of God. Jewish people down through the centuries – right
up to today – have repeated those words at least twice daily: “Hear, O
Israel, the Lord is our god, the Lord alone! Therefore you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your strength.”
A contemporary rabbi, commenting on these words
from Deuteronomy, suggests that they are a prayer and more than a
prayer. They are, he says, a ‘Pledge of Allegiance to God.’ So important
are they that Deuteronomy mandated them to be worn on the wrist like a
bracelet and even dangled from the forehead so they could always be
before one’s eyes. And they were to be placed at the doorposts of every
home – not unlike the way we place holy water fonts and make the sign of
the cross at the doors of our churches. There’s simply no overdoing that
prayer, that pledge. They are the heart and soul of the Jewish faith.
And, of course, they are the heart and soul of
our Christian faith, too. When asked by a Scribe what was the first of
all the many commandments of the Law (and there were many: well over
600), Jesus unhesitatingly quoted the celebrated passage from
Deuteronomy, and then added words from the Book of Leviticus, “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.” By putting those two together – even
though he numbered them “first” and “second,” Jesus was saying that the
two commandments are really only one – that love of God and love of
neighbor cannot be separated.
The writer of the New Testament First Letter of
John makes this teaching even more explicit: “If anyone says, ‘I love
God,’ but hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for whoever does
not love a brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he
has not seen. This is the command we have from Jesus: Whoever
loves God must also love his brother or sister.”
My friends, in the reading from Deuteronomy, it
was Moses who set before the people the heart of the Law, the heart of
their faith. In the gospel, it’s Jesus who sets the same before us and
the stakes are high, very high: we will either be lovers or liars.
Mother Teresa – Saint Mother Teresa - perhaps
more than any believer of modern times, found a way to make all this
very real, a way to translate it into the most human of terms. She often
spoke about finding the face of Jesus in what she called “his most
distressing disguises.” To make the point, she once shared an experience
she had on a trip to Venezuela.
It seems a wealthy family had given Mother
Teresa’s community some land on which to build a home for poor orphaned
children. When she went to thank her benefactors, they introduced her to
their children. The eldest was seriously disabled and disfigured and
couldn’t speak. “What is his name?” she asked the mother. The mother,
with a beautiful smile on her face, said “We call him ‘Professor,
Professor of Love’ because he is teaching us all the time how to love.”
Later, Mother Teresa reflected on this: “Professor of Love,” they called
their son, so terribly disabled, so disfigured. And so he was. He was
teaching all the time.”
I meet “professors of love” rather regularly
and I suspect you do, too, but I don’t always think of them in this way
and their lesson is lost. I think, for instance, of the time I got
stopped on the street by a homeless fellow. I was in a hurry as I too
often am, and he was anything but, and he had a story he was intent on
sharing with me. Before long, I broke in to tell him I was in a hurry
and I asked him if he needed some money. He looked me right in the eye
and said, “I guess I could use a little, but I’d rather talk…!”
I’ve often thought of that “professor of love”
and, in my better moments I thank him for the powerful lesson he taught
me about the two Great Commandments.
Father Michael G. Ryan
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