Which is the greatest commandment?

One Declarative Sentence

Regarding the Sunday homily, a Catholic attorney once told me, Father, shorter is better. I have not always heeded his advice. But Jesus does, in todays Gospel. He preached a homily in two sentences. That would be like me
stopping right now.

Like me, Jesus fellow rabbis found it hard to be concise. They had managed to multiply the original ten commandments to a whopping 612 laws, each of which had to be strictly kept in order to make it to heaven. So it is no surprise
that a scholar asks him, which commandment of the law is the greatest? of all these laws, which is the one we really need to practice?

Love God
And Jesus answers: You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, soul, and mind. Three things about this
answer: First, Jesus commands us to love God first. It is
the first order of business, not what we do when weve
got all our shopping or homework or housework done.
Loving God is done with our first fruits. Second, Jesus
commands us to love God with everything we have:
emotions, soul, and intellect. We not only have to love
him first of all, but we have to love him with all we have.
Heaven is more precious than, say, an Olympic Gold
Medaland worth putting more into its attainment. And
third, Jesus reduces the lengthy list of laws down to one
only: Love God. And that is his whole homily. Love God,
really love Him, with all you have, and everything else will
be OK. Seek ye first the Kingdom, and everything else
will be given unto thee besides. St. Augustine was fond

of saying, in the fourth Century, Love God and do what

you will. In other words, if you truly love God, you will
not want to do anything sinful or harmful or stupid. You
will be able to do whatever you want, since you will only
want that which is good.

Your Neighbor
But Jesus adds a second commandment: Love your
neighbor as yourself. Why does he add a second
commandment? Because often the only way we know we
are loving God, whom we cannot see, is by loving the guy
sitting next to me, whom I can see. Mother Teresa
insisted: every person is Jesus. She meant every single
one, particularly the ones you cant stand. If there is even
one person in your life you dont love, your love for God
still needs some work.

My Invisible Neighbor: the unborn

I want to conclude with two practical applications. What
invisible neighbors do we often ignore, and so ignore

God himself? I point out two kinds of folks we commonly

ignore: the unborn and the dead. October is respect life
month, and November is the month of All Souls.

First, the unborn. Many classes of Americans are not

accorded their proper human rights, such as the right to
adequate health care, to a living wage, etc. But there is a
whole class of Americans that dont even have the right
to live.
Now, let me say that not many of us have had abortions,
but all of us have been complicit in some way with the
abortion mentality. So none of us is innocent. But abortion
is a kind of national schizophrenia in America. We say an
expectant woman is a mother and has a baby one
minute, and the next minute we deny she is a mother or
has a baby. I buried Laci Peterson and her unborn son,
Connor, 8 years ago in Burlwood cemetery. There was no
doubt in anyones mind that Connor was a person, even
though he was still 2 months before birth.

Every health provider in this country calls what is in a

womans womb a child or a baby, unless she wants to
abort it. Then we call it a product of conception or some
other demeaning term.

But

what, actually, is in a mothers womb? If its not a baby,

shes not pregnant. Playing word games, in this case, is
fatal to someone.

And loving my

neighbor means helping support a woman who is with

child, and defending the life of that child against a savage
abortion industry.
My Invisible Neighbor: the dead
A second type of forgotten neighbor are the dead.
November 2nd is the Mass of All Souls, which reminds us
that we need to remember those who are in Purgatory.
I have a long list of people I pray for every day, and while
preparing this homily, I realized that every person on my
list is still alive.

I do not pray

for anyone by name who has diednone of my

grandparents, nor friends over the years who have died,
or any of the good folks I have buried over the years with

Catholic funeral Masses.

I am going to add some names to my prayer list, and I am

going to get an all souls envelope, put some money into it
so I dont forget, and place it under the altar for the
month of November. This year, Im going to start praying
for those who have died by name. That is the love God
asks of me.

The Law and the Prophetsthe entire Judeo-Christian

faith, can be boiled down to two words. Love God. But to
know that I am really loving God, I need to be loving the
person sitting next to me. Every person is Christ.