Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • Saint Andrew Dung-Lac & companions

    Saint Andrew Dung-Lac & companions

    Today's saints | Today's readings

    St. Andrew Dung-Lac was a priest in Vietnam in the early nineteenth century. He and his 116 companions, including Spanish Dominicans, members of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, and 96 Vietnamese, including 37 priests – of which Andrew Dung-Lac was one – were all martyred around the year 1839. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 Catholics were martyred in Vietnam during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

    These martyrs knew well the dilemma that faced St. John in today's reading from the book of Revelation. The scroll – the word of God – tasted sweet on the tongue, but became sour in the stomach. The sweetness of receiving the Gospel very often becomes sour when one now has to live it. But live it we must, and quite often at a price. For St. Andrew and his companions, it was at the price of their very lives. For each of us, the price may be different.

    Whether we have to pay by having to give up a job promotion because it does not allow us to live the Gospel, or of having a strained or broken relationship with someone in our lives because they do not share our beliefs, or even just the social stigma of not giving in to the peer pressure that leads us to consumerism, the call of the Gospel can turn our lives sour indeed. This is often called a "white martyrdom" (as opposed to the "red martyrdom" of those who paid with their blood) and we are all called to suffer it at some point.

    But may we all step up and eat the scroll, proclaiming its message by our very life's witness.

  • The Presentation of Mary

    The Presentation of Mary

    Today's feast | Today's readings: Zechariah 2:14-17, Luke 1:46-55, Matthew 12:46-50

    You know, I'm not sure how my mother would react to my not acknowledging her presence like that, but I know it wouldn't be good! But, lest we impute the wrong motives to our Savior, we should understand that He was well aware of Mary's contribution to the will of God. St. Augustine reminds us that Mary was extremely obedient to God's will and singularly cooperative with God's plan of salvation. He says: "Indeed the blessed Mary certainly did the Father's will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ's disciple that to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood."

    Jesus was holding up Mary as an example of discipleship to all of us. Our constant efforts and prayers should be directed at being as open to the will of God as she was. By her fiat, saying yes to God through the angel Gabriel, Mary opened the world up to the possibility of salvation through Jesus Christ.

    The feast of the Presentation of Mary goes back to around the sixth century in the Eastern Church. It appeared in the Latin Church around the eleventh century and was made a feast of the Universal Church in the sixteenth century. This feast is not historical, but is based on a tradition from the early church of Mary having been presented in the Temple to God by Joachim and Anne when she was around three years old. This was to fulfill a promise made to God when Anne was childless. The tradition continues the theme which begins at Mary's Immaculate Conception, continues through the celebration of her birth, and through the Presentation we celebrate today. This tradition teaches us that Mary's destiny to fulfill God's will began before she was born and continued through her early childhood.

    We call on the intercession of Mary our Mother today, that she would guide us to lives open to the will of God, and that she would lead us always to proclaim the greatness of the Lord in soul and in spirit.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God;
    That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • Monday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Lord, please let me see.”

    What a wonderful prayer. Certainly in the blind beggar’s life, that prayer was for the gift of physical sight. But maybe that’s not the kind of sight we need. Maybe the kind of sight we need in our lives goes a bit deeper inside.

    There are those of us going through difficulties in life: problems at work, family issues, personal stuff. These kinds of things can be so frustrating, especially when there is no end in sight. The blindness here is that maybe we can’t see the solution. Perhaps we’ve prayed so often about it, and nothing seems to change. “Lord, please let me see…” the solution to the problem, and give me the grace to see the answer to my prayers.

    There are those of us who have to deal with difficult people in life. Whether they be co-workers, neighbors, or even members of our own family, the issues between us may cloud any ability to God at work in our brothers and sisters. “Lord, please let me see…” other people through your eyes, eyes that see the goodness of others and not just the obstacles between us.

    Whatever it is we are frustrated about, we can bring that to our Lord today. As we offer our gifts, may we also offer our frustrations and give them to the Lord. And, as we receive our Lord in the Eucharist today, may we our prayer for grace be the words of the blind beggar: “Lord, please let me see.”

  • 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Nobody Left Behind!

    33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Nobody Left Behind!

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings make me think about the Left Behind series of books. Written by Evangelical authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, these books take a fictional look at what might happen if the end-times were to happen in our lifetime. While they are fictional, there is a theology underlying the fiction that is very intentionally being fed to their readers. And their readers are not just a tiny group. Over sixty million of the books have been sold worldwide; there are also movies, video games, and a whole bookstore of stuff to buy based on the series. I myself read them for a while, mostly for entertainment since I didn’t agree with the theology. Later on they just became too much and I gave it up.

    If you haven’t read any of these books yet, good. There are so many reasons not to read them, not the least of which is that they have the end-time theology all wrong. If you have read them, and were able to get past their fiercely anti-Catholic undertones – apparently LaHaye and Jenkins lump Catholics in with the vast non-Christian masses who will be left behind – you need to know these books should be left behind because they miss the point in a huge way. The whole idea of the “rapture” – in which those who are “saved” are taken up and just disappear one day and those who are not saved are left behind wondering what happened – this idea has never been part of Catholic theology. It hadn’t been part of any Protestant theologies either until the nineteenth century.

    But the success of these books points out a very important thing about our culture, and maybe just about human nature. As humans, we are intensely concerned about the end of things. Whenever we let ourselves stop and think about it, we wonder things like how and when we will die, what the afterlife looks like, and how things will all work out at the end of time. I think it’s just natural that we would want to know where we’re going and when we’ll get there.

    This is such an intense fascination for some, that there have often been some very strange interpretations and responses. Those who have tried to figure the end times out have certainly not been right, and have had tragic consequences as well. We might think of people like Jim Jones and David Koresh to realize how tragic it can be when we give in to this curiosity in a way that leads us apart from others. A good litmus test of these ideas is whether they take the group apart from others or not. If the idea causes people to leave their families and join a cult-like group, it’s probably an idea that is tragically flawed. We may not know much about the end times, but we do know this: if we don’t go together, we’re not going at all. The Kingdom of God is about unity, not separation.

    So having said all that, what are we supposed to do with these readings? How can they possibly make sense for us? The imagery is just astounding, I think we would all agree. The first reading from the prophet Daniel speaks of a time “unsurpassed in distress” but promises that those who are wise, that is, those who have a relationship with God and heed his commandments, will “shine brightly” and be “like the stars forever.” In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of a time of great darkness, a time where everything that seemed so firm: the moon, planets and stars, shall be destroyed and come falling out of the sky. Having passed through that, his angels will gather up the elect. The imagery we hear in these readings is absolutely frightening, but also gives us a future worth looking forward to.

    But I wonder, really, if we can even relate to these readings. Both readings are examples of a specific Scriptural genre called Apocalyptic writings. Apocalyptic writings are a type of prophecy that is written to or for a community in great distress. They foretell future events, especially about the end times. Both the Israelites to whom Daniel was prophesying, and the early Christian community who received the Gospel of Mark, were undergoing persecution. The early Christians were being thrown out of their synagogues and often enough being killed for their beliefs. Apocalyptic writings then minister to these communities by foretelling a bad end for their persecutors, and a time of relief and salvation for the persecuted community.

    The early Christian community, in particular, enjoyed the prophecy of these apocalyptic words because they expected the return of Christ to be very immanent, within their own expected lifetimes. They needed the words Jesus spoke in this Gospel to get them through the intense persecution they were undergoing in order to remain faithful until the time of Jesus’ return.

    So, again, what do we do with these readings? It seems like we are not the intended audience. I mean, it being a Catholic is probably not intensely popular these days, and the message of the Gospel seems to get lost in today’s secular society, but, let’s face it, people in Naperville aren’t dying because they are Christians. Those who insist on worshiping God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit aren’t being cast out of the community. And let’s not forget that in these readings, the drastic events they foretold, which they expected to happen immanently, have not taken place in two thousand years. The sun did not fall out of the sky. The moon was never darkened. So these readings may not even have much of a ring of truth to them. Well, then, how do we understand them today?

    But, you know, when we take a deeper look at them, we can see the truth in these words. Back in Daniel’s day, the Israelites probably felt like their time was that period of unsurpassed distress. The persecution they were undergoing was probably the worst thing they could possibly imagine. For the early Christians, too, there was horrible distress. They were being cut off from the community and murdered, so it probably felt like the darkest time of all, a time when the heavens and the earth were all collapsing so fast and they couldn’t do anything about it.

    We’ve had some of that in our day, haven’t we? This past September, we had the fifth anniversary of 9-11, a day that we will never forget. Who didn’t feel like everything was crashing in around us in those days? What about the vast cloud of darkness and fear that has lingered ever since, making us afraid to travel at times, or even go out in public? What about the devastating hurricanes in the south last year that destroyed New Orleans and all the areas around it? Talk about your world crashing in on you – most of these areas will take years and years to be rebuilt. Add whatever you’d like: tsunamis in Asia, earthquakes in many places, and the list goes on. When we hear about all that, we have to know that people affected by these tragedies feel that their world has come to an end. What could be worse than what’s happened to them?

    And I really believe that if I were to ask for a show of hands or go around and ask people about how their lives were going, we’d see a lot of cataclysm right here in the lives of the people sitting around us. Who hasn’t felt like everything that was solid and sure has crumbled to pieces when we’ve experienced the untimely death of someone we love? Who hasn’t felt persecuted when they have had to go through lay offs on the job, marriage troubles, domestic violence, alcohol or drug abuse, or any one of hundreds of possible calamities? The truth to be found in these readings today is that life will rarely leave any of us unscathed. At some point or another, everyone goes through something horrible, and it seems like everything is falling apart.

    If that’s what you’ve been going through this past year, maybe these readings are speaking directly to you. If your life has been unraveling in some way, then these readings are offering you hope. They speak the truth that we will indeed have to go through trials and distress, but they also speak the truth that God is our salvation. Even if everything is crashing down around us, God is our sure foundation. We can trust that the Kingdom of God will have no end, and that Christ will come again to save his people.

    And when it comes down to it, the knowledge that our God is in control and is faithful to us is worth more than knowing when the end of time will come. If we remain faithful in persecution and unite ourselves to Christ our Savior, we don’t have to worry about details like that. We know that of that day or hour no one knows, and we don’t really care. Those who trust in God as their allotted portion and cup can truly trust in his mercy and grace and salvation, even when it seems the whole world is falling apart.

  • Saturday of the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Whenever the time grows short, it can be tempting to give up the mission. Especially if it seems like there is a lack of results. That’s where we find ourselves on the issue of prayer very often, I think. We may have prayed for a loved one or a situation until our knees are raw and our throats are parched. We may have prayed fervently, shedding tears. And now, maybe, with the time growing short, those tears may be tears of frustration, or anger, or abandonment.

    But God is decidedly not an unjust judge, right? We know he loves us and cares for us. That’s why I think it can be so frustrating to have prayed and prayed and prayed, and never see anything happening. We get to this point in our spiritual lives all the time.

    The Gospel today is calling us to be persistent. We know that God loves us and we know that he will act for our good. We probably don’t know what the answer to our prayer will look like, but rest assured, if we pray persistently and with openness to God’s will, we will know the answer when we see it. It can be hard to be that trusting and open when the life of someone we love is at stake. Whether it’s disease or addiction or a job situation or family problems or any one of thousands of afflictions, we just can’t bear to see our loved ones go through it. Especially when we’ve been praying.

    But if our prayer means anything, then it’s got to be persistent. We have to trust that God will render a decision that is just and right. It may take time to see that happen, but we have to see it through in prayer.

    The time is growing short. So when Christ returns, will he find faith on earth? May his return find us fervently and persistently in prayer.

  • St. Elizabeth of Hungary

    St. Elizabeth of Hungary

    Today’s readings | Today’s Saint

    [Mass for the School Children]

    Today we celebrate the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Elizabeth was the daughter of the king of Hungary, and she married Louis IV of Thuringia when she was fourteen years old. They were happily married and had three children together. Together, they tried to live the ideals of St. Francis who was all about living simply and helping the poor. So they sold their possessions and gave the money to the poor. This upset Elizabeth’s in-laws, who probably were hoping to inherit the things Louis and Elizabeth owned. When Louis was on the way to fight in a war, he was killed. Elizabeth’s in-laws forced her out of the palace, and she and her children went to live with her uncle who was a bishop. After Louis’s friends returned from the war, they restored Elizabeth to the palace and her rightful place. St. Elizabeth is a woman who lived a simple life and dedicated her life to loving others and helping the poor. She is the patron of Catholic Charities.

    The story of St. Elizabeth and the story about the old man in the play our fifth graders acted out remind us about two things. First of all, they remind us that living a simple life brings us closer to God. The old man didn’t care about how rich he could become if he sold his land; he only wanted to live in the house he grew up in for the rest of his days. Elizabeth didn’t care about all the possessions and luxury she could have in the palace; she only wanted to live the Gospel and help the poor. By not surrounding themselves with money and luxury, they could see and appreciate all the things that really matter.

    Second, these stories remind us that sometimes loving people is hard. The old man loved everyone in the town, but when they thought they could get rich, they turned on him. He loved them anyway. Elizabeth loved the poor. So when her in-laws threw her out of the palace, it would have been easier for her to stop helping the poor. But she didn’t. By choosing to love people even when it was hard to do that, both the old man and St. Elizabeth were models of God’s love for all of us.

    Today’s Gospel calls us to do something that is hard for us to do: love our enemies and be good to them. Who wants to do that? It’s so much easier for us to love, and be kind to, people who love us back and who are also kind to us. But anyone can do that, Jesus tells us. All of us who want to follow Jesus have to go a little further and to love everyone, whether they love us or not. Yes, that’s hard to do. But if we could just trust Jesus enough to love and be kind to someone who isn’t kind to us, we could really change things. We could really see how God’s love changes everything if we would love everyone, no matter how hard that is to do. We have to treat others just as we want to be treated.

  • Thursday of the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the things that has helped me in my spiritual life is the knowledge that “we’re not home yet.” We can list all kinds of things, I’m sure, that remind us that this life in this world is not perfect. But our hope is that we have the kingdom of God to look forward to. We Christians all long for the day when we will be part of the Kingdom in all its fullness. Today Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, and his disciples, about the Kingdom.

    To the Pharisees, Jesus issues a warning. He tells them they may as well stop looking for signs of the coming Kingdom, because the Kingdom is right under their noses! They have already missed the forest for the trees. The Kingdom of God is right here among them, ushered in by Jesus himself.

    To his disciples, Jesus gives encouragement. He tells them that the days will come when they long for the Kingdom, but when that happens, they should not let themselves be easily led astray. They shouldn’t lose heart because they can’t see signs, and they should not be afraid when he himself has to suffer and die. The Kingdom of God, he tells them, does not come without a price, but it’s a price worth paying.

    To all of us, also his disciples, I think he is saying both things. First of all, we cannot miss the Kingdom of God among us. We can’t be so wrapped up in ourselves and our concerns, or so focused on the Kingdom yet to come, that we miss God working and building his kingdom among us. The Kingdom is here, alive in the faithful, celebrated wherever God’s people live the Gospel. And second, we must not be tempted to look for signs of the end times. David Koresh and Jim Jones should not have any attraction for Christian believers. The end will come when the end comes, and if it happens while we are still here, may the end find us ready for the Kingdom.

  • 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time: We never see the widow

    32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time: We never see the widow

    Today’s readings

    The thing is, we never see the widow.

    There are widows in both the first reading and today’s Gospel and neither story describes the widow. We don’t know what she’s wearing, if she’s tall or short, nothing at all about how she looked or anything. That’s pretty typical of most Scripture passages; we don’t know much of that about many of the characters we come across in the readings. But somehow, in these readings, especially in the Gospel, the lack of notice seems a bit more culpable than typical Scripture glossing-over of details.

    We just never see the widow.

    In the Gospel story, if Jesus didn’t see the widow, well, nobody would have. They would certainly have noticed the rich people who put in large sums. The collection boxes were designed that way. As they dropped in their many large coins, the donation would have made quite a loud clanking as they worked their way to the bottom of the box. Many times, people would time their deposit so that they could get the most attention possible. But a poor widow dropping in two small coins would never have gotten anyone’s attention. Except that Jesus saw her.

    Jesus saw the widow and noticed her meager contribution. But in seeing the widow, Jesus knew all about her. He saw the lack of status that she had as a widow. Women in that society had no status at all unless they had a male figure to take care of them. A father, brother or husband meant that a woman would be taken care of and protected. But a widow would have given up her father and male family members to get married. And, at the death of her husband, she would have lost that protection also. Widows in that society were in a very bad way.

    Jesus also saw the widow’s contribution. It was a very small contribution, equivalent to about one sixty-fourth of a denarius. A denarius was a day’s wage. A contribution that small was so insignificant that it would hardly have been noticed among the large contributions made by the rich people. But Jesus knew that the two small coins were perhaps all the poor widow had in the world. Any status or protection she would have as a widow would have come through the money she had. In giving the two small coins, she was probably giving everything she had. Jesus knew that for her, giving those two small coins was a way of giving up any control she had, and now the only person she could rely on is God. We never hear what happens to her, but her act of faith does not go unnoticed.

    The situation is much the same in today’s first reading. Elijah the prophet is fleeing from his enemy, King Ahab. Ahab wanted to take Elijah’s life, and he is on the run. Here we see the powerful prophet completely at the mercy of those who seek him, and he has no one to whom to turn. Except for a poor widow. In Elijah’s day, even a widow was expected to show hospitality to a guest, even at the cost of all she may have. That was the custom. So Elijah asks for a drink and receives one. Then he asks for a cake, and the widow protests that the little bit of flour and oil was all she had for herself and her son, and she was planning on the two of them dying after having consumed it that day. But, ever attentive to the demands of hospitality, she does indeed make him the cake. And the prophet’s promise that the flour would not run out nor the flask of oil run dry is beautifully fulfilled for a year. Unlike the widow in the Gospel, we see that this widow is taken care of by God, and perhaps we can assume that God took care of the Gospel widow as well.

    Because God does see the widow.

    God sees the widow for the creation that she is. God knows her plight and hears her cry. Through the ministry and generosity of widows, God cares for prophets on the run and provides for the upkeep of a Temple. Through that same generosity, God provides a rich example not just of generous giving – although that’s there too – but of giving up control in order to experience the life, and care, and salvation that comes from God. The widow gives up what she has and she is cared for. When she is oppressed by unscrupulous Scribes who take her house for their own benefit, her cries are heard. God sees the widow.

    And if God sees the widow, then we had better see her too.

    But, we don’t. We miss the widow in our midst time and time again.

    There are many people represented by the widow in these stories. The Psalmist gives us a look at all those who went unnoticed in his time. He sings that God secures justice for the oppressed, feeds the hungry, sets captives free, gives sight to the blind, raises up those bowed down, loves the just, protects strangers, and sustains the fatherless and the widow. God sees all of these people.

    The widows in our time are all those who society forgets. The single mother. The homeless man. The forgotten elderly in nursing homes. The children of the poor. The unborn who are aborted every day. The terminally ill. The immigrant woman who comes in to clean the office when you’re headed home for the day. The mentally ill. Those on death row. Members of our armed forces fighting in far-away lands.

    We never see any of these people. But God does.

    Once again, we are coming to the end of our liturgical year. And so we must continue the kind of liturgical soul-searching that I’ve encouraged us to engage in these last few weeks. We need to take a look back at our lives this year and identify those we may not have seen the way God does. Maybe they are some of the strangers that I mentioned already. But maybe there are people closer to us that we have not noticed. Members of our family, neighbors, co-workers. Who are the people we have not noticed because we have been so wrapped up in ourselves? Who are the people we have forgotten because we are afraid that stopping to help them will leave us poorer? Who are those we have neglected because of selfishness or lack of concern? Who are the ones we have not seen?

    What about our relationship with God? Has it reflected the action of the widows in today’s Liturgy of the Word which showed that letting go of everything we have gives us the opportunity to let God care for us and give us what we truly need? Or has our selfishness kept us bound up and attached to the things in our lives and in our world which have no permanence? Have we given up the Kingdom of God only to purchase a way of life that does not lead us to our Creator? Have we desperately held on to status, wealth and passing pleasures or have we let go and experienced the freedom that gives us the true security of God’s love and care for us?

    There is a paradox in today’s readings, brothers and sisters. We are definitely called to start seeing the widows and all those who are forgotten among us. We are certainly called to care for them, because we are the instruments God uses to take care of those who need his protection. But, we are also called to be more like the widow. We are called to give from our need and not from our abundance. We are called to let go of everything we think we have in order to catch hold of the One who longs to gather us back to himself. The only real freedom we will ever have is when we give up every security we think we have in order to gain the care of our God who is always faithful.

    Our hope has to be that our participation in the Eucharist this year has led us to a place where we are close enough to our God that we would see the widow. May we see the widow, and all the forgotten among us, and respond to their needs. May we see the widow’s example and give out of our comfort level in order that God, who is never outdone in generosity, can work his grace in our lives. May we see the widow because God does, and may we know the grace that was poured out on the widow in Elijah’s story, whose flour jar did not go empty and whose flask of oil did not run dry.

  • Tuesday of the 31st Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the 31st Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Back in the days of Jesus, if someone was going to give a big party, preparations needed to be made a very long time in advance. Invitations could not just be photocopied and mailed, or even emailed; no, they had to be hand written, and taken personally to each person’s home. Enough time had to be given for the invitees to respond so that a count of the guests could be made and refreshments prepared. Once one responded that they were coming, often the host would send out servants or family to collect the guests when the preparations were made and the festivities were to begin. This is the setting for the parable in today’s Gospel.

    Everyone has been invited to the feast, and – this is the important part – they have all accepted the invitation. They have said they will come, but when the preparations have been made and they are called to the feast, they all have excuses about why they cannot come. And notice the kinds of things that are keeping them from the feast. One has bought land, another purchased a flock of oxen, another has been married. I am guessing that none of these things came up at the last minute. Plans have to be made for purchasing land, oxen, and certainly for getting married. So one wonders if they ever had any intention of coming to the feast in the first place.

    The parable was addressed, of course, to the Jews. They were the chosen people and had been invited to the feast from the creation of the world, for heaven’s sake! Yet, now that Jesus is here, and the feast is ready, they have all kinds of excuses as to why they cannot come. Jesus is not the kind of Messiah they expected. So, they won’t be coming to the Kingdom.

    What about us? We have certainly been invited, from the moment of our baptism. When the feast is prepared and we are called to come to the heavenly banquet, how will we respond? Will we find some excuse as to why we cannot come right now, or will we joyfully make haste to our Lord? God forbid that we should hear the ominous and deadly words that the host speaks at the end of today’s parable: “I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.”

  • 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time: You are God; I am not

    31st Sunday of Ordinary Time: You are God; I am not

    Today's Readings

    You are God; I am not.

    I was once told that those six words are perhaps the most important prayer a person could ever have. You are God; I am not. The whole point of any prayer in the first place is putting God and ourselves in proper order. We need to know what we must do, and what we can depend on God to do. We need to be able to respond to God's activity in our lives in order to be the people he has created us to be. We need to know that He is God and we are not.

    The Jewish prayer that we hear in the first reading is quite similar to this prayer. That prayer is known as the Shema, and it is a prayer that the Jewish people have said every day since it was given to them by Moses in this story. There were just four Hebrew words to that prayer and they translate roughly to "LORD God; LORD one." Or, more readably: "The LORD our God is LORD alone." We hear Moses giving the Israelites this prayer today as they stood on the banks of the River, waiting to cross over into the Promised Land. You may remember that Moses was not to enter into the Land with them, and he knew that his time was drawing to a close. So in this speech, he is giving them a final bit of teaching and summing up all that he has said to them.

    He teaches them, too, that it is love for God that is of primary importance. Knowing God is nice. Hearing God is nice. Obeying God is a good thing. But the final commandment he gives them is that they are to love the LORD God, and to love God with everything that makes them human: their heart, their soul, and their strength. Moses knew that love for God was what constituted a real relationship with God who longs to be in relationship with his people. Knowledge of God and obedience of God could never take them that far. And they are to love God completely because that is how God loves them: with God's whole heart, soul and strength. God continues to love his people, even when they have strayed, because that's just God's nature.

    Fast forward now to Jesus' time and we hear the same teaching this time coming from the mouth of Jesus. In that time, the Scribes would often argue among themselves as to which of the 613 laws were of primary importance. They would classify some as "heavy" and others as "less weighty." So when the Scribe in today's Gospel reading asks Jesus which of the laws is the first of all the commandments, it is in that spirit that he asks. He is asking, teacher to teacher, which of the laws is the greatest.

    But Jesus can't pick just one law. He has two favorites. The first of these is the law we heard Moses speaking in the first reading, although Jesus adds to it. For Jesus, we should love God not just with all our hearts, souls, and strength, but also with our minds. This completes for him the range of human faculties with which we must love God. If we do not love God with our hearts, those hearts become hardened and the source of all kinds of evil. If we do not love God with our soul, then we cannot count on the soul to see us through our trials and toward eternal life. If we do not love God with our minds then we may consider those who do so to be out of their minds. And if we do not love God with all our strength, then that strength will be used for all kinds of self-serving distraction that takes us out of relationship with God. Love of God is the first and greatest commandment.

    But the second is much like it. Taking a quotation from the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 19:18), Jesus says that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. Just as we love our own bodies and our own lives, we are to love our neighbor. We are to love our neighbor because it is the physical manifestation of our love for God. If God, who is love itself, pours out that love on us, then we too must pour out that love on one another. As St. John says in his first letter, we cannot love God whom we have not seen if we do not love our brothers and sisters, whom we do see every day. Love of God, neighbor and self are all one package, all bound up together and made possible because of the love God has poured out on us.

    As I said, the scribe asked the question about which law was the greatest for pretty much academic reasons. Most people when asked that question would have stopped at Jesus first response, since the command to love God with all one's heart, soul and strength was so well known. That said, and having heard Jesus' response, he is clearly impressed with Jesus answer, having seen it as creative and an improvement on what he may have heard thousands of times before. He is so impressed with Jesus' response, in fact, that it leads him to reiterate it in a kind of profession of faith. He sees that God's love is the center of everything we do and are. God is the love that fills our heart. God is the beauty that enlivens our mind. God is the life that animates our soul. God is the way that leads to our strength. The Lord our God is Lord alone. He is God; we are not.

    And now it is Jesus who is impressed with the answer of the Scribe. Having heard his profession of faith, spontaneously pronounced by this man who knew the whole of the law, he tells the Scribe that he is not far from the Kingdom of God. The Scribe has moved beyond mere knowledge and understanding to faith. This is no longer a mere academic exercise for him; it is a statement of belief and a response to God's love. The love of God has transformed him and his theology has moved from his head to his heart.

    He is not far from the kingdom of God, but he's not there yet. As consoling as Jesus' congratulatory statement was for him, there was still an element of challenge in it. The Scribe is still on the way to the Kingdom. What he lacks is what Jesus has been saying throughout the Gospel all this liturgical year. He has to sell his possessions and give to the poor, then come follow Jesus. He has to accept the Kingdom like a little child. He has to take up his cross and follow the Lord.

    We too are still on the way, aren't we? As we approach the end of this liturgical year, it is time for us to look back and see how far we are from the Kingdom of God. Have we come to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength? Or do we still love distractions more than we love the One who made us for himself? Have we let go of the things we possess too tightly and followed Christ, or is letting go something we have not yet accomplished? Have we accepted the Kingdom of God like a little child; unquestioningly, and with total dependence on God, or do we still think we're God in some ways? Have we taken up our crosses, or are they still there waiting for us? How near are we to the Kingdom of God?

    Because the Kingdom of God is our greatest goal, brothers and sisters in Christ. And that has been on our liturgical minds a lot in these past days. On Wednesday, we celebrated the solemnity of all the saints, who through faithfulness to God and total dependence on Him have already entered into the heavenly reward. On Thursday, we remembered the souls of all the faithful departed; those who are still on the journey but have passed from this life. These still are working out their salvation in what we call Purgatory. But all of us are members of the Communion of Saints. The Church teaches that the Communion of Saints is made up of all of the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven. We are all united by our common goal: the Kingdom of God.

    And the way to reach our goal sounds so very simple. We must let go of this life and cling to the love of God. We must remember that He is God and we are not. But that's hard for us, isn't it? The process of entering the Kingdom of God is really a process of dying, which can be quit
    e painful. It is a process of dying to self that begins at baptism, and ends when we get there, a process that takes us through life and death, and perhaps Purgatory, but which always ends in the Kingdom because that is the promise that God makes to all of those who believe in Him.

    The best way to get started, or re-started on that journey is to pray every day as you leave your house: You are God; I am not.