31st Sunday Ordinary Time
Deacon Tom Vert
Preached: November 3, 2024
It’s the only thing that matters…
There are times in your life when something dramatic happens and the whole world comes into focus. The little things like what coffee to order, how much to spend on a hotel for my vacation, who offended me last week at work, or the latest reel or post on social media become irrelevant because your perspective, all of sudden, in a single moment becomes focused.
It may be the sudden death of a loved one, the diagnosis for the sickness of a child, a major car accident or any other scenario, but you find yourself knowing what is truly important in life, and the irrelevance of the “fluff” that sometimes consume our daily lives.
In my life I have had these moments, and though I am worried about the outcome, I am glad that I have a chance to regain clarity and true perspective in life and what matters most.
Today’s gospel story gives us a glimpse of this same thing from a spiritual perspective. We see a scribe or a lawyer in different translations… an expert, testing Jesus when he was entering Jerusalem for the last time, trying to get him to say something heretical.
So, he asks him “which is the first of all the commandments”?
It should be noted that on top of the 10 commandments, there were 603 other rules and regulations given in the Hebrew faith, and many of the scribes and Pharisees would argue if some had priority over others or were they all of the same importance?
Jesus gives the scribe and us the key answer “there is only one thing that matters” and that is love! The truth is that they already knew the answer!
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!” This is called the Shema from Deuteronomy chapter 6 and the Hebrew people repeated it twice a day, in the morning and evening. And the following verses are part of it :
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind,and with all your strength.”
Then Jesus reminds them of the joint commandment from Leviticus chapter 19:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The verses to love God and one another they knew, but they really needed to change their perspective to see once again what was important, to get rid of the “fluff”. Jesus was the first to put these two verses together by showing that we love God who we don’t see…by loving those we do see! Jesus reminds us of the fundamentals of the faith, the call to love!
Pope Francis last week wrote a letter about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and he reinforces this same message saying that “In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.” And that the “Best response to the love of Christ’s heart is to love our brothers and sisters. There is no greater way for us to return love for love.”
He reminds us of this verse in the gospel of John – “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
So, the question for us today is “can we love a little bit more?” Can we love God a little bit more by:
• Adding one more moment in our day when we reach out to him in need or in gratitude
• Maybe one more prayer of intercession for a friend or a colleague
• Maybe reading one more scripture verse in our Bible or off our phones to remind us of His love for us
Can we love one another a little bit more by:
• A bigger smile or a longer conversation with the barista at the coffee shop or the check out person at the store
• One more Tupperware of soup or chili dropped off to the single mom with kids down the street
• One more hug to the person struggling with anxiety, depression or loneliness.
• A little more patience and understanding
• To talk a little bit less and to listen a little bit more.
The apostle John in his letters writes so beautifully about this when he says:
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Just take a moment this week, think about love, and say: It’s the only thing that matters…
