You shall Love the Lord your God with all your strength

Deut. 6:2-6, Heb. 7:23-28, Mk 12:28-34.
On this Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B, the Church invites us to proclaim the primacy of God’s love as man’s fundamental task. Today's first reading recaptures part of the last moments in the ministry of Moses among the Israelites as they approached the Promised Land. It was paramount at this moment in their history to refresh their memories of the commandments of God; affirming the central theme in the Jewish faith which is the faith in 'One God' and that our utmost comportment towards God is love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.” In today's Gospel, Jesus re-echoes the same proclamation of God's love with a simple sentence that Jews recite several times a day: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mk 12:29-30). With this proclamation, Jesus reminds us that, first, we must proclaim the primacy of God’s love as man’s fundamental task. Jesus affirms and teaches us that to be the greatest of all the commandments and of course the summary of all the laws and prophets, together with its corollary “you must love your neighbour as yourself.”

God created us out of love, He sustains us in love and He redeems us out of love and out of the same love He bestows on us the gift of participating eternally in His love at the end of time. Our only response to the love of God is love and the only way to respond to love is to love; to love God above all things with our whole heart, mind, body and to concretely live this love out in our love of our neighbours. Love is not just an idea or an abstract principle to be wished and speculated upon. The simple summary is this; we can love God and neighbour by concretely putting into practice the Gospel value. Here we must think eminently of working for peace as a practical way to live love, in our families, in our communities, in our countries and in the world for there is so much violence and unrest in the world in a time when people lay huge claims to love. It is either our claims of love are empty or we have not truly understood what love is all about. Peace is one of the fruits of love. Where there is love, there is peace and “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Mt 5:9).

May the Lord help us to fill every atmosphere with the splendore of love, so that the love of God may reign in our minds, hearts, souls and through us disseminate to every corner of the earth, bringing forth fruits, especially the fruit of peace! Amen!! Good morning and happy Sunday!!!