Love With All Your Heart, Soul and Mind

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Gospel of Matthew 22:34-40

"You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

What is considered the "Greatest Commandment" in today's secular society?  Unfortunately, I no longer think it's to love God with all your heart , soul and mind.  It's more like love yourself.  Strive to fill your heart with as many sensual pleasures as possible.  Aim to fill your soul with pride and vanity.  Discover ways to fill your mind with all kinds of filth.  Our corrupt, broken society has no qualms forcing poor young girls into sex slavery, recruiting young boys into drug cartels, or killing innocent families in religious persecutions.  Why has the concept of the Greatest Commandment changed?  Do people not realize without God at our center, and love for our fellow neighbors, evil actions against our brothers and sisters will continue to prevail?

Love with your heart   To authentically love with the heart is a difficult act.  So many people simply annoy us.  Others are mean, spiteful and difficult to get along with.  Still other people make it known that they simply do not want our love!  The heart grows fonder of our fellow man, and closer to Christ's own Sacred Heart, when we learn to love everybody including the most unloveable. Personally, I've spurned a lot of "hate" in my own heart over the years.  I've purposely avoided individuals I simply couldn't stand!  I've had to pray hard, and change my thought patterns, in order to love the person.  As a priest once said, We can still love the person but hate the sin!  When we love others we show God that we love him, too!

Love with your soul   Love with the soul develops through a healthy prayer life.  When we pray to the Lord, and even ask for our Blessed Mother's intercession, we feel at peace.  It's easier to love God because we feel his presence.  We know he's very close to us.  At times we may doubt if our soul is truly in line with God's will, especially in times of suffering, burdens and struggles.  Rest assured God is with us!

Love with you mind   To love God with our mind involves reading and studying scripture.   It involves meditation on His Word and spreading his good news to others.  It means using our God-given intellects to understand the Lord more personally and intimately.  Our secular society wants to influence our minds by devaluing God, convincing us that we can be more successful if we simply do what we want without paying attention to moral attributes or even common decency.  We simply cannot love God with our mind if we fill it with trash!  Let us take out the garbage and clean our brain's wastebaskets.  Fill our minds with the pure love of Our Creator.  

Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind is something not unique to Christianity.  It goes way back to the time of Moses and our Jewish ancestry.  The Greatest Commandment seems to be on attack in our secular culture but doesn't have to be.  We can continue to honor this commandment by loving God and our brothers and sisters just like he loves us!

-J.