The Heart of Life! 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sermon by Emmanuel Suntheni OSB – Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B
Sermon and Christian Act in The Word
Theme: The Quality of Love! The Heart of Life! Let us live in love!
Point of Reflection: What is central to human life? Today’s readings respond to this question from the Christian perspective: IT IS THE QUALITY OF LOVE, thus, THE HEART OF LIFE, which is, Love God and your Fellow Human Beings.
First Reading: Deuteronomy 6:2–6
Psalm: Psalm 18:2–4, 47, 51
Second Reading: Hebrews 7:23–28
Gospel: Mark 12:28–34
Sermon (Reflection): There is only one thing that is most important and a must-do to any Christian and this is the central theme of today’s Scriptural readings, thus, LOVE YOUR GOD AND NEIGHBOUR AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF. There is no other greater commandment and a must-do for any Christian other than LOVE.
Quite interesting to note is that the commandment to love God and fellow human beings comes from Jesus Christ who is presented in the second reading of today as a high priest as a continuation priesthood of Jesus as narrated in last Sunday’s second reading (30th Sunday year B in Ordinary time). In today’s passage(Cf. Hebrews 7:23–28), the author emphasizes the permanence of Jesus’ priesthood, his holiness, and his legitimacy as the high priest. Unlike the human priests whose service inevitably ended with death, Jesus’ priesthood, like Jesus himself, is everlasting.
Therefore, without any interruption, Jesus continually represents his faithful people before God, thereby granting them permanent access to the Father. As a person without sin, Jesus is holy and blameless. Unlike human priests, he does not need to offer sin sacrifices for himself. Rather, his sacrifice on the cross was a final, once and for all action, which achieved permanent reconciliation between God and sinners. The legitimacy of Jesus’ priesthood did not come through any institution or human appointment. It came through the divine oath stated in Hebrews 7:20, in the words “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever’.” The entire passage is meant to remind Christians that Jesus, their priest, guarantees them permanent access to God and ensures their own holiness through the forgiveness of sins. Through Jesus, then, we can say, we have access to the Father and the assurance of eternal life. Thus, Jesus is the centre and the heart of Christian faith and life. We just need to open our hearts to receive Christ.
With access to the Father, Jesus in the Gospel of today quotes the “Shema” from the Old Testament which is the first reading of today. The “Shema” is the central theme of the entire Old Testament and it stands at the very heart of the Hebrew simple command word “Hear”.
This twice-repeated command contains and conveys two central elements of Israelite faith and life
The first “Shema” commands the people to hear and obey Moses’ instructions with great diligence. Their survival and prosperity in the new land will depend on their obedience to God’s Law which Moses communicated. However, based on past experience, Moses knew that exhortations to obedience alone will not suffice. He had exhorted them before, often with little success. Therefore, Moses pronounced the second “Shema”.
This second exhortation to “hear” is very different from the first one. Here, Moses exhorts Israel to hear that “the Lord is our God, the Lord alone”. The Hebrew word translated here as “the Lord” is the personal name of the God of Israel revealed in Exodus 3:14 as “I am, who I am”.
The second part of this “Shema” contains the memorable call to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”. Love means a commitment that goes far beyond performing rituals and following the rules. Love entails the internal and external adherence to God that involves the entire person and his or her existence in all its aspects. The Israelites understood the “heart” as the centre of thinking and willingness, the “soul” as the source of life itself, and “strength” as the life force. Thus, Moses calls for the complete and total engagement of the human person in living a life centred on God. Such a life would naturally involve obedience to God’s commands. With its double call, to utter loyalty to, and ardent love of, God, the “Shema” unambiguously defines what is central to the nation’s existence; it identifies the heart of Israelite life.
The Shema today is calling us to have the quality of love which is the heart of human life and this is well illustrated in the Gospel passage of today.
The scribe who conversed with Jesus in the Gospel story was probably somewhat confused. He was a professional who studied and taught the Jewish Law. The Law contains 613 commandments and norms. The scribes were engaged in on-going debates attempting to prioritize and rank this body of laws according to their importance. It was easy, even for a trained professional, to wonder and be confused as to which commandment should be considered the most important. The scribe did not come to test Jesus, rather, he sought Jesus’ opinion in this matter.
Jesus’ answer is remarkably simple but profound. True to his Jewish faith, Jesus cites the “Shema” as the first and central commandment. Complete loyalty to and utter love for God comprise the most important and the central commandment of the entire Law, and set the focus for human life. The commandment identified by Jesus as the second in the order of importance comes from Leviticus 19:18. It demands the love of one’s neighbour as oneself.
The true significance of Jesus’ statement lies beyond establishing a hierarchy of commandments. By citing these two commandments together, Jesus indicates that loyalty to and love of God must be accompanied by love for fellow human beings. This association shows that, for Jesus, the life of a true believer is governed entirely by love, and that the love for God must extend to the love for the other. Following Jesus’ guidance, the scribe merged the two commandments into one statement, adding that these two, loyalty to and love for God and the “other” take priority over acts of worship such as sacrifices and burnt offerings. Seeing that the scribe had adequately identified the central principles for human life, Jesus affirmed that he was “not far from the kingdom of God”. Jesus indicated that by knowing that the love of God and of the neighbour were the heart of life, the scribe was ready to allow God to rule his life entirely, just as the Shema demanded.
Following Jesus’ lead, the Jewish scribe was able to identify the love of God and of one’s neighbour as the central commandment of the Law. Having this commandment as the “heart of life” makes the person a citizen of God’s kingdom.
The believer who knows and lives by this commandment can only concur with the Psalmist in the words, “I love you, O Lord, my strength”. This is the very calling for us Christians to truly love God and our fellow Human Beings with all our strength.
Christian Act in Word of God “Listen! Love God and Neighbour”
When I reflect on the spelling of the word LOVE. It means everything about the Christian calling. LOVE: which is simply spelled as L: Listening, O: Obedience, V: Value, and E: Evaluate. That’s all that is needed for the Gospel of today: To listen to the Lord in the Word of God, to Obey the commandment of God as reflected in the first reading of today, to Value God and others as the main commandment is to love God and our neighbour, to Evaluate our life: what is most important in any relationship is to evaluate yourself and reposition yourself for the betterment of tomorrow. The keyword to love is to listen.
St Benedict in the prologue of his rule for monks and nuns said “Listen my son/daughter with ear of the heart” This simply means that what is most important is to listen. This follows a saying that God created us with one mouth and two ears so that we may listen twice and speak only when necessary. Listening goes beyond hearing because hearing employs only the ears, but listening needs both the ears and the heart. Today’s liturgy invites us not only to hear the Word of God but also to listen to it with attentive hearts so that what we have heard may bear fruit in our lives. And this fruit is to love God and our fellow human beings with our actions not only with words.
The first reading stresses the impact of God’s commandments ought to have on our lives. We are invited to listen and make the tenets of God’s Law, succinctly summarized in the Ten Commandments part and parcel of our lives. Listening with the heart to the voice of God resounding through these commandments allows the word of God to take root in us and to captivate us. Once this happens, a gradual transformation begins to take place, a change that makes us more and more people after God’s heart.
Our willingness and effort to listen to God in the quiet of our hearts parallels our ability to listen to others. In the age of constant and instantaneous communication, when sending out messages and projecting ourselves into the public domain changed from being a privilege of the few to a compulsive necessity for all, talking, without communicating anything, has become an accepted norm for many. Someone said that those who do know how to remain silent do not know how to talk. Indeed, that is a great truth to this in our times. Swamped by the floods of words and messages we cease to listen. Perhaps, in our time, the interpretation of the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself should be paraphrased as “listen to others as you yourself would want to be heard.”
The hunger for a truly attentive ear, for a genuinely emphatic presence, haunts our modern world where, ironically, people in constant communication feel more alone and solitary than ever.
May our hearts open to God’s gentle whispers, and may our ears be attentive to the words of those around us. To hear them, we need quietude and attentiveness. In our age and time, the pursuit of these values might well describe what the love of God and of the neighbour means. The act of love to any person is a calling for each and every Christian.
Action: I will unconditionally love God and my fellow human beings.
Prayer: Dear Lord, Open our hearts to receive your love and help us to unconditionally love You and our fellow human beings. Endow in us the spirit of love and a listening heart to hear You through Your words; teach us to make Your word active in our lives and bring peace to our societies. We ask this through the Word of God, Jesus Christ our perfect high priest, Amen.
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