This week we continue with the games of the Pharisees. Again they are trying to trap Jesus. One the favorite past times of the Pharisees, beside laying snares for Jesus, was to discuss among themselves which of the 613 commandments of the Jewish Law was the greatest. Today, we hear the Word of God in the flesh—Jesus, who is the author of all law, set the record straight. He points out the greatest; in fact, what lies at the very heart of the Law—LOVE.

The greatest Commandment is the first, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and soul.” And the second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The great St. Augustine commenting on the relationship between the two greatest commandments said, “If your ever confused, everything in the bible, and all of the Church teachings points to these two laws, everything else is nothing but commentary.” Everything else our stewardship, the living out of our mission, our apostolate, everything else is contained in these two laws, why? Because God is Love itself.

We, as Christians, have heard these greatest of commandments many times before, but have we really thought about them deeply? There is actually a proper order in following them, for you see you can’t love one without first loving the other. You can’t love your neighbor if you don’t first love your God, that is love Him totally, absolutely, first and above all else. Then second you can’t love God if you hate your neighbor, any neighbor, period.

How does one understand these two laws and the order and relationship between them? What does it look like to live them correctly and with a proper balance? Well the best way is to understand them and see them lived correctly is as always to look at the lives of the saints. And in our day, we don’t have to just look to the saints of old to see the proper order and living out of the first and second commandment, we have so many contemporary examples available to us, for instance, Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

There is the example of Mother and a couple of her sisters coming across a poor man dying in the gutters along one of the streets of Calcutta. Now the gutters of the streets of Calcutta are actually the sewage system. And if it could be any worse, this man’s body was literally infested with worms and maggots. One could only image the stench and the repulsiveness of such a sight. Nevertheless, Mother and the sisters pick the man up, ignoring the stench, ignoring the sight, his dirty body soiling their pure white habits. They lovingly carried him back to the home where they cared for the poorest of the poor. There they cleansed this man and cared for his wounds picking out of his flesh the vermin that had infested it. And they did it which such care, as one observer noted; “that you would have sworn they were doing it to Christ Himself.” The man, shortly before He died, looked up at Mother and said, “Now I know that God exists, for no-one would have done what you did to me unless God was real and He and His love existed… With that he died in peace, not only with his body cared for, but his soul as well. Later a person said to Mother, “I wouldn’t have done what you did for a million dollars!” And Mother replied, “Neither would I, but I would do it for love of Christ.”

Mother, by her example, taught us the power we have as Catholic Christians to change hearts and souls when we love God before and above all else and then live that love by loving others as ourselves. She on many occasions gave us the practical secrets to living, not just a life of social work, but a life of true charity—loving others not just with human love, but with the divine love of Jesus, with Jesus, alive in one’s soul. On one occasion she said, “My sisters and I could never ever do what we do in the streets of Calcutta unless we begin every day with an hour of adoration before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, followed by Holy Mass and the worthy reception of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. She also once said, “You will never see Christ in the face of the poor, unless you first see Him (through faith) in the Holy Eucharist. She also said once to one of her sister’s; “It doesn’t matter who you see in the face of the poor, but who they see in your eyes! Do they see Jesus and His love alive in you?!” Mother on so many occasions said the same things in different ways, giving us the secret to her great power and holiness and a proper understanding of the two greatest commandments.

The great error of our day is actually a confusion of the proper order of these two commandments. It is a very attractive error. Many think that true religion consists primarily in loving and serving one’s neighbor, but they are wrong. True religion consists primarily in serving, loving and adoring God, first in our Worship of Him during the Sacred Liturgy of the Church, offered worthily and correctly, and then, by following His commandments and the teachings of His Church with the help of His grace offered to us in the Sacred Liturgy; including of course, all the Sacraments of the Church. The Sacraments give us the power, God’s power, to love God greater and to show that love by loving our neighbor as ourselves with God’s love not just our own. If only us Catholics truly began to comprehend the power of the Sacraments we would change our current world overnight…but they must be received with faith.

This contemporary error of putting service of neighbor before the worship of God, is shown by those who think they are righteous and good because they give food to the poor and do good works but then don’t worship God according to the third commandment so that Jesus and His Divine Love is alive in them through grace; and so aren’t able to truly live out the commandments and teachings of Church in the state of grace, that is with, in and through Jesus and His love in them.
This same error of and inversion of the first two commandments was shown in past years by some making the emphasis of our Religious Ed programs consist in service projects to the poor, but failing to teach our children to adore and then to live the doctrines of the church along with the Commandments. Don’t get me wrong, we need to have our kids do service projects, but we need most importantly to first lead them to a deeper faith in the Holy Mass which is the proper worship of God, the Sacraments (especially the Most Blessed Sacrament), as well as give them the doctrines of our Church for they are the truth that gives freedom and life—we can’t truly love God or neighbor with the doctrines of the Church.

I once heard a prelate in the Church comment that there is a danger in the growth of adoration of the Eucharist in our day. He said that the danger is that of making faith just about Jesus and me. While it is true that our faith cannot be only about Jesus and me, the problem is not found in adoring Jesus during Holy Hours of adoration or during Mass. While it is possible for one to adore Jesus in Holy hour and to receive Him at Holy Mass and then not go out and love ones neighbor, it is impossible to love one neighbor correctly with charity without adoring Jesus during Mass or Holy Hours and receiving Him worthily. Grace has to be cooperated with yes, but it must first be received. We have to come in contact with the very source of Love before we can truly love; and God is the source of love for He is Love Itself.

The first commandment is not only a commandment to Love God but to love Him through Adoration. Adoration is coming before God in humility realizing that we are the creature and He is the Creator and everything, everything is a gift from Him. We are but poor with nothing to offer Him except ourselves, our wills. And even this we don’t know how to do, because we are so attached to ourselves and what we have, especially our wills and so we lack docility to God’s will. To adore we need God’s help. And here is where the Holy Mass comes in.

At the Holy Mass we are able to be present at the greatest and only perfect act of adoration and love the world has ever seen, that of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. The Sacrifice of the cross was (and is) really God adoring God, because it was (and is) Jesus adoring the Father. Because the Holy Mass, by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the gift of the Sacred Priesthood, makes present in time and space the same sacrifice of Calvary, we can more and more offer ourselves to the Father along with, in and through Jesus’ own sacrifice, thus practically carrying out the first commandment, to love God above all else. We are then empowered by receiving Jesus Divine power and Love, by receiving His own Sacred Heart in the Holy Eucharist to go out and love our neighbor as ourselves.

But the Holy Eucharist only has the power to transform us to the extent we die to self, to our will, purify and clean ourselves in the sacrament of confession and then offer ourselves to Father through, in and with Jesus in loving response to the Father’s love in the gift of His Son in the Holy Eucharist. The more we die to self, the more we offer ourselves in adoration with great faith, trust and love, the more we can take the love of Jesus, Jesus Himself, out to all we meet in our homes, schools and work. The more we then live a life or purity, that is a life of holiness, the more then we can be transformed into love at Holy Mass.

That great orator and priest, Archbishop Fulton Sheen once describe this adoration at Holy Mass when he said, At the Holy Mass we come to the foot of the cross now transplanted from Calvary onto the altar of our own church and there Jesus hanging on the cross looks out over all present and says, I can no longer suffer and die for the souls of mankind, will you give me your human nature so that I can continue the work of the salvation of souls, suffering and dying for them and loving them in and through you.”

“No greater love is than this, than a man who would lay down his life for his friends.” Only by growing and perfecting in love the self-offering of ourselves in adoration to the Father through Jesus during the Holy Mass can we imitate the saints and fulfill the greatest of all commandments, that of Loving God first and out of love for Him, loving our neighbor as our self. Only then will they, the poorest of the poor, that is those who do not know God loves them, only then will they see Jesus in our eyes and in our smile. Our Lady of adoration, Mother of the Holy Eucharist and our Mother, help us to adore the Father, in Spirit and in Truth. Amen.