Our love of God is to actually first to receive His love and mercy.

Homily for Matthew 22: 34-40 Thirtieth Sunday (Extra-Ordinary Form).

In our Gospel today, we continue with more testing of Jesus by the chief priests and elders. Their intentions are of course not pure. They don’t care about the truth, they are just trying to trip Jesus up…get something they can use against him. As we heard last week, Jesus silenced them regarding the question about healing on the Sabbath.

Today, Jesus is asked which of the 613 laws are most important. It would seem to be a fairly hard question. Out of the 613, if I ignore one, how will that affect the others? Often, such as last week, Jesus does not answer the question directly. Jesus is very clever; he usually turns the question back on the chief priest and elders. He does this however, not just to trip them up but to answer the question in way that would lead those who are open to His grace closer to God; in other words, to lead them closer to Himself.

Today however, Jesus does answers the question directly: What is the greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

Love God and love neighbor. We hear something we hear so often, and yet we find it so hard to do. Jesus says something so simple and we really want to love God and love our neighbor, but we really struggle; especially we want to love our family fully, yet it seems the more we try the more we fail. We have to ask ourselves why we fail; why can we love the way we ought or the way we want?

I think we often can accuse ourselves of a lack of effort as the reason for your failure to love:

-we have not loved God with all our mind- we have failed to diligently study our faith by reading the Scriptures or the Catechism or other resources for our faith.

-We have failed to love God with our whole heart: we have not put enough effort in our prayer live. We have failed in prayer by failing to make it a priority in our lives; perhaps this is because of our busy schedules or the children or we become so distracted in our prayers that it seems futile or we just don’t “feel” like it.

-We have failed to love God with all our strength because we have put our own will before His. We have put our comfort before really doing what God wants us to do.

I would like to suggest perhaps something you might not think. Perhaps we have failed to love God because we have not placed first things first. If Jesus says we have to love God, what does Scripture say about loving God? “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.” Our love of God is to actually first to receive His love and mercy. This is what Jesus is trying to do with his hearers today…He is trying to lead them to Himself, to recognize in faith His divinity so that they can adore Him and open themselves to His Divine Love and Mercy.

The fact that we fail to love Him and fail to love our neighbors is because we are not full of His love, but full of our own self-love. The more we open ourselves to the love of God the more his love overcomes our selfish love, purifies us for love, and strengthens us to, for love. We just cannot love our neighbor, especially our family members, unless we first open ourselves to God’s love and mercy in our own lives. But we can love God and Neighbor, if we allow God to love us first. We do this most fully by our adoration of God.

The first Commandment is really first and foremost a commandment to adore God. Adoration places us as humble creature before God recognizing our complete and absolute dependency on God our Loving Creator. Adoration places us in contact with this Creator God who is Love Itself. We adore God not for God’s sake, but for our own. Adoration opens us to God’s love in our lives and in our families.

Our adoration of God can occur any time, but primarily it must occur before God incarnate truly present in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is the God who is Love become Man before us in order that we can be in the presence of He who is Love. Jesus, as I said wants to lead us to Himself. In His True Presence we can experience Love of God is way like no other, we can receive His mercy in order open ourselves up more fully to His love. And by opening ourselves to His love we can offer ourselves to Him in order to become one with Him. This oneness can then occur sacramentally as we literally receive our Love in Holy Communion.

Adoration of God in the Holy Eucharist is not always easy especially for us moderns who have to be “doing” something. And so, just being present before the Holy Eucharist in silent adoration can seem like we are wasting our time. However nothing can be further from the case, time spend before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament can be the most active time we can spend on this earth…Heart speaking to Heart, Love making us one with Himself, us allowing Him do to so, so that we can love Him and love our neighbor, our friends, parishioners and family members as we ought as we desire; even more so we can love them for Jesus, with Jesus’ love.

Let us ask make a new priority in our prayer-Jesus today, just like in our Gospel wants to lead us who are open, more and more to His divinity by leading us more and more to His Humanity in the Holy Eucharist. Through the intercession of the Blessed Mother may we be given the grace to be open to God’s love in our lives, especially during our adoration the God-Man Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. May the Adoration of Jesus truly present in the most Blessed Sacrament of the altar be the priority of our lives and the lives of our families, including our parish family as well. Amen.