This
is the commandment that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you: that you fear the Lord your God, you and your
son and your son’s son.
Having elaborated on that stark
commandment, Moses then went on to say:
Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is
one. You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words I command you today shall be
on your heart.
And
there, dear People of God, we have an essential aspect of our religion: it
is truth founded on the unshakeable rock of reality. The Almighty, the Unutterable, the Awesome
and Majestic, the sustaining Creator of all that is, is -- by His very
nature – Fearsome for, and to be feared by, His creation. However, He is also – for His chosen
creation, His Chosen People – One who is to be loved: with all your heart and with all your
soul, and with all your might.
Dear
friends in Jesus, never forget that Catholic saving, truth, is based on reality;
that is why God sent His only-begotten Son, His Word of Truth, to come
among us, to become one of us through Mary of Nazareth and the Holy Spirit of life
and love. Beautiful imaginations are not
saving, truth … they can, for a time and in favourable circumstances, be emotionally
inspiring; but never, never, can they pretend to be ‘life-stakingly’ reliable words, words bringing peace, for salvation.
Let
us consider more closely, more intently, more lovingly, our blessed Lord and
Saviour.
I
have just said that He was sent among us by His Father; that is how
Jesus Himself always preferred to express ‘why, how’ He came among us to be our
Saviour. He came, as One sent by
His Father; that is, at His Father’s command.
That does not mean that He Himself had been unwilling to come among us;
on the contrary He had wanted to come as our Saviour, but out of love above all
for His Father, Who had originally, and most lovingly, created each of us -- as
free persons -- in His own image and likeness. Jesus had wanted His Incarnation to be a work
of truth founded on the unshakeable rock of reality, that is, a work
founded on the irrefragable truth of His love for His Father and the rock-solid
creative love of His Father for His human creation. The
devil’s deceit, had brought about -- through Eve’s disobedience, and Adam’s
weakness -- a hurt for the Lord and God of all creation; because, by
creating man-and-woman in His own image and likeness, He had humbly left Himself liable to hurt in this
one aspect. And His beloved,
only-begotten Son, willed – with the unutterable majesty and intensity of His
divine love for His Father – to right that wrong, restore that hurt, by coming
among men as One of them, One Sent -- under obedience -- to form a new, obedient,
People of God through faith in Himself; a people willing to be guided and sustained
by His most Holy Spirit, the divine expression of the love eternally bonding the Father and His Son.
Our
second reading tells us that Jesus is a priest forever:
Consequently He is able to save to the
uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make
intercession for them.
He
always lives to make intercession for us in heaven, where He entered as perfect
God (triumphant after His resurrection and ascension) and perfect Man
(thanks to the human flesh and blood He received from the immaculate Mary of Nazareth). He thereby opened the gates of heaven for
those ‘sheep of His flock’ willing to walk, in the power of His most Holy
Spirit, along the way He Himself -- as Jesus of Nazareth -- had already traced
out for them. The way of Gospel truth
was written by His chosen Apostles under the inspiring guidance of Jesus’ most
Holy Spirit, Who recalled to those Apostolic authors all that Jesus had said
and done, all that He intended to be proclaimed
– in His name, by the Church of His choosing and formation -- to the whole of
mankind, for their salvation as potential children (in Him, the only-begotten
Son) of God the Father.
Let
us finally hear Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel reading, which confirm, and
give their final consecration to, those words of Moses we heard earlier:
The most important commandment is, ‘Hear O
Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your
strength.’ The second is this: ‘You
shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.’
Jesus, the Son of God, had been sent, had come among us as our Neighbour, bringing salvation for all who would believe in Him and allow themselves to be re-formed by His Spirit in the likeness of Himself, as children, adopted of God. Thus, was attained the Son’s ultimate intention of finally restoring the hurt that He, as most-beloved and only-begotten Son, could not bear to see affecting His Almighty, Majestic, and – for all who would come to know Him by sharing in the divine ecstasy of love which is eternal life – most Humble, Father of us all.
