CT - Catholic Telegraph

Pay attention to what God is saying

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Deuteronomy 6:2-6.

The rationale for the Lectionary's presenting this particular Old Testament reading on this particular Sunday is clear. Jesus quotes it in the gospel (Mark 12: 28b-34) in response to the question of the scribe about which of God's commandments is most important. Reading the original text from Deuteronomy provides us the context that Jesus was referring to.

In Deuteronomy, the Israelites are portrayed as ready to enter the Promised Land, and Moses is giving them a series of final instructions. In chapter five, Moses has reviewed for them the Ten Commandments that they had received at Mt. Sinai earlier in their years of wandering. Our text, from chapter six, provides a summary of what had gone before. It is a kind of wrap-up of what God expects of His people, a summary of the whole law.

In the first two verses, there is a kind of introductory statement. "Keep the laws that God has given you," Moses says. "If you observe what I have commanded, you will grow and prosper when you enter the land that I have promised you." Then comes the great commandment, "Only the Lord is God, and you must love Him with all your heart and soul. Pay attention to what God is saying!"

These last verses constitute the basic principle of the whole Mosaic law. They are the keynote of Deuteronomy and became the basic prayer of Judaism, a prayer that observant Jews recited three times each day. There are several absolutely basic truths here.

First of all, the prayer teaches us that God is one. The God of Israel was not to be fragmented into various functions as the pagan gods were: fertility, rain, sun, moon, warfare. God is one, and there is no other.

And God's people are to respond to Him with full commitment of heart, mind and strength. There is nobody else, nothing else that deserves our full energy and attention. Just as God is one, so also our response to God must be one, a single undivided heart. Nothing and nobody is more important than the Lord. Nothing and nobody has a deeper claim on us than the Lord. We are to love God with the totality of our being.

The response that God asks for from us is not just reverence and submission. God calls for love, for personal dedication of heart and mind. It is on our loving response to God that all righteousness depends.

Scripture scholars point out that, while the call to love God is implicit in many other places in the Old Testament, this is the only time that we have a deliberate, explicit commandment to love. Maybe that's why this passage became so central, so important to the religious life of God's people.

Finally, we need to be aware that this command is given in the second-person singular. That is, it is directed not to the great collective of the people, but to each individual Israelite. What's called for is not some sort of corporate mindset, but personal response from every member.

When Jesus quotes this passage in the gospel, He immediately adds a second commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself." This, too is a quotation from the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18). In its original context, "neighbor" seems to have meant "fellow countryman." Jesus would teach that "neighbor" embraces all other human beings, even our enemies. The point of Jesus' response to the scribe is that two loves are required from the person who wants to observe the law of the Lord: love for God and love for neighbor. Neither is sufficient in itself. Neither is authentic loving without the other. It is both together that make us eligible for God's kingdom.

But out of all this there arise questions. What does it mean to love God? How do we go about it? How are we to address ourselves to the Lord with all our heart and soul and strength? How are we to love our neighbor? What kind of love do we owe to the men and women around us, men and women we may not even know, who may not be likely to love us in return? These are not easy questions to which there are simple and easy answers.

Loving God and loving our neighbor can be very demanding and the results of them are not always immediately forthcoming. But if nothing else, we know the principles. God has given us the basics. How we implement the basics is what constitutes the story of our lives.

For reflection and discussion

How is my relationship with God most basically formulated?

What does the oneness of God mean to me?