Reflection for Thursday, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Word

By


Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore

Mark: 12:34 "When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Today's Reflection

There is no doubt that there is the presence of evil in this world.

From atrocities and heinous crimes to cheating and deception, such acts of evil happen every day.

The 1st reading mentions of a particular type of evil, a spiritual evil that took the lives of seven bridegrooms of the innocent Sarah.

On the wedding night of Tobias and Sarah, they were aware of the harm that the evil spirit could do, and so they turned to God and prayed for protection and for His blessings on their marriage.

In a world where we see so much evil happening, there is the temptation to return evil with evil.

The person who questioned Jesus in today’s gospel reading was looking for the most important commandment out of the hundreds that were in the Law.

However, Jesus did not give him one commandment, but two, what he called the greatest or first commandment and another commandment that resembles it.

In focusing on the core of the Jewish Law Jesus found it necessary to highlight two commandments.

What is common to both commandments is the word ‘love’.

It is as if Jesus is saying, ‘if you really want to boil down what it is that God wills for our lives, it is love’.

If what unites these two commandments is ‘love’, what distinguishes them is the object of our love.

If these two commandments to love are the most important of all the commandments in the Jewish Law, the first and most important of the two is to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength.

In that first commandment, we are being asked to give God first place in lives.

God alone is to be loved with all our being.

This involves acknowledging our dependence on God, recognizing how much we receive from God and then offering all that back to God in love.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola had a strong sense of how much he had received from God and a great desire to give it all back to God.

In one of his well-known prayers he says, ‘Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, all my will – all that I have and possess.

You, Lord, have given all to me. I now give it back to you’.

That prayer captures this all-embracing love of God that Jesus calls for in the first commandment.

Such love of God is the foundation for our love of others.

According to Jesus, it is our loving relationship with God which will empower us to love others in the same generous way as he loves us all.

To carry out that commandment will entail facing resistance and opposition by the forces of evil and their agents.

We need to constantly pray for God's protection and help to live out that commandment of love.


Resolution and Prayer

Let's resolve to love God and give Him the  prime place in our life and pray that our Lord God protect us from evil and bless us to be instruments of His love for others.


Saints of the Day

St. Charles Lwanga and his fellow Ugandan martyrs were treated cruelly by the local ruler. Charles helped his 21 young companions resist sexual exploitation and maintain purity. He is a model of virtue and is the patron of youth and Catholic action.

Have a blessed day. Stay safe