Readings:
• Dt 6:2-6
• Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
• Heb 7:23-28
• Mk 12:28-34
“When you buy an automobile,” wrote Archbishop Fulton Sheen in Remade for Happiness (Ignatius Press, 2014; orig. 1946), “the manufacturer gives you a set of instructions.” Those instructions cover tire pressure, type of engine oil, and proper fuel.
“He has nothing against you by giving you these instructions as God had nothing against you in giving you commandments.” God wants us, Sheen wrote, to “get the maximum happiness out of life. Such is the purpose of His commandments.”
Unfortunately, we are easily tempted to view the commandments of God in skewed, faulty ways. It is common today is to view the commandments as restrictive and meant to keep us from enjoying life. They are viewed as authoritarian, even as thinly disguised forms of punishment. Another way, common during the time of Christ, is to see the commandments as external measuring sticks that control every aspect of life, with an emphasis on external acts, to the point of losing sight of the intimate, internal goal they point us toward.
The first approach emphasizes a false freedom, and the second emphasizes a shallow conformity.
The Law and the commandments, all 613 of them, were at the heart of Judaism, and the question put to Jesus, on the surface, was not unusual. Yet that question—“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”—was not asked out of desire to learn, but to test.
In fact, the word “tested” is the same word used to describe what the devil sought to do when Jesus went into the desert: to tempt him (Matt 4:1). The question was abstract, even academic, but the response by Jesus was direct and personal: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
In asking the question, the lawyer revealed himself to be duplicitous and devoid of love, while Jesus, true Teacher and Lord, demonstrated his firm love for that man, just as he has demonstrated his love for each of us.
The first part of Jesus’ response was drawn from the Shema, the central Jewish declaration of faith: “Hear [shema], O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!” (Dt 6:4-9; cf. 11:13-21; Num 15:37-41). Observant Jews recited the Shema each morning and evening, and Jesus would have prayed it regularly.
Therefore, those listening would not have disagreed with Jesus’ answer, for to be a Jew meant loving and fearing God, and therefore keeping his commandments (Dt 5:29).
However, they surely didn’t expect the second part of his response: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
The two loves—of God and of neighbor—can be distinguished, but they cannot be separated, for they are the two foundations upon which true religion, real communion, and authentic morality are established.
To love God with the whole heart, noted St. Cyril of Alexandria, “is the cause of every good”, and so the first commandment “prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second.” Loving God involves giving ourselves completely to him, and allowing his will to be shown in and through us.
“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus told the disciples in the Upper Room, “love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35; see Catechism, par 1823).
Such is real freedom in God, and true conformity to the image of the Son of God (Rom 8:29).
(This “Opening the Word” column originally appeared in a slightly different form in the October 26, 2014, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
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We read: “The Law and the commandments, all 613 of them, were at the heart of Judaism…”
But, what does this mean, “at the heart”? Recalling what ST. IRENAEUS has to say about the Ten Commandments: “From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart [!] of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue.”
So, Christ came to fulfill this Law written on both stone tablets and, first, the heart of human nature, from the beginning. So, what about the rest of the 613?
As a non-theologian and not a biblical scholar, yours truly proposes that the SIGNIFICANT MEANING is not the remaining 603 jots and tittles, which were not written in stone, but the cumulative total of 613….For illustration, let’s take the New Testament parable of the 153 fishes. Scholars report that this number was the believed total number of fish species in the world, and therefore portends the universality of the Church. St. Augustine, alternatively, suggested that what was involved was the sum of the 10 commandments plus the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, such that the sum and then the sequence of 17+16+15+…n adds up to, guess what, 153!
Now, in the OLD TESTAMENT world, the uncreated and eternal God was associated with the permanence of the sun, and some early calendars reflected 365 days in the solar year. Further, it was also believed that the total number of parts in the created and mortal human body was 248. The total of what is infinite and what is mortal is, guess what, 613!
Might we propose that the non-arbitrary (!) number of 613 intuits the historic and very personal entrance of the uncreated Triune One into the created realm of human experience—the verbally prophecied Anointed One? The INCARNATION as confirmed and as humanly witnessed in the Resurrection and recorded proclaimed in the New Testament.
SUMMARY: Grace perfects—does not annul—our gifted and baked-in human nature/natural law, or the Decalogue at the heart of the 613, as explained by St. Irenaeus.
They [the commandments] are viewed as authoritarian, even as thinly disguised forms of punishment (Olson).
Why isn’t that what is being said to be rigid? Even sinful? Quoting Cyril of Alexandria is an excellent explanation of Christ’s explicit commandment taken in context of the spectrum of divine love, that to love the Lord your God with all your heart encompasses every and all good.
Olson emphasizes the new commandment, the impossible edict to love eachother as he has loved us. To actually love my brother as Christ has loved me isn’t possible without the gift of grace and the willingness to live it. Here is where I often fail, when even when addressing a good I lack the responsibility of expressing a truth with kindness. It’s a form of ownership of what really belongs to God. Who alone is good.
Thank you, Carl, for this helpful reflection.
I especially value your concluding reference to Jn 13:34-35. For when at times I get disgusted by my moral failures and repeated stupid mistakes, I think that loving others as we love ourselves doesn’t always set a high standard for our conduct. But loving others as Christ has loved us truly and always does establish the highest possible standard.
Why isn’t that what is being said to be rigid? Even sinful? Quoting myself for sake of further articulation of the conscientious problem the Church, cleric and laity faces regarding Pope Francis’ continued press for greater compassion in acknowledging exceptions.
Loosening up the rigging actually catches more wind for efficient sailing, while excessively tight rigging does not. An analogy that may be applied to absolutely strict adherence to Church doctrine or allowing for exceptions. Divorced and remarried is the initial issue addressed in Amoris Laetitia. It seemed at the time most hierarchy agreed that there conceivably are exceptions to the rule. The Dubia cardinals submitted a yes or no proposition to Francis who refused to respond, perhaps assuming it’s not a yes and no proposition, rather one that must be discerned. Although the Church went along guardedly, concern spread as other doctrine came into question. The very notion of moral absolutes [its principles loosened by mitigation and conscience] thou shalt not kill [abortion], sexual perversity began to fall under the umbrella of compassion. What the Church appeared willing to assent to now became the unacceptable premise that exception is the rule that all may be made welcome, offering the possibility of salvation to a failing Church losing membership.
Results are otherwise, apostasy has accelerated. The message most take away from this pontificate’s approach to doctrine is that adherence is not an issue. If not an issue why be concerned with joining a universal social club with no admission fee, no regulations except be kind to each other.After all, despite all the appeals to openness and kindness with no exceptions, Christ did give us with admonition the commandments.
If doctrine is a weapon Apostolic traditionalists use to pummel the disenfranchised sinner Francis response is an all embracing love that makes no distinction from being warm and kind to the adulterer, pervert, liar – from the Catholic with a martyr’s spirit of concern and love, from that passionate love for the salvation of sinners that is willing to shed their blood, as the Apostle says when he chides the Christian who has not reached that level of faith.
It’s from this segment that Christ’s commandment to love eachother as he has loved us is manifest, those who implore the sinner to make the hard but saving decisions that transform the enemy of truth and love to the likeness of Christ.
What a splendid morning it is to encounter this article – thank you, Carl. It has elevated my spirit, yet pierced my conscience, and propelled me forward in the noble endeavor to be obedient to God’s commands within a proper perspective and attitude. It is with a profound awareness of my own frailty that I lean entirely on the on of God, seeking His grace and strength to more faithfully embody His teachings and commandments. As I strive to deepen my love for God, I am called to extend that divine love in service to my fellow man and striving to reflect His boundless love in all my actions. I recognize and fully admit that I all short, if not abjectly fail, to consistently, daily remember that I have a work to do in loving others and being of service.
Yes, true of course but in this age the chief unrepented sin against that is Intellecutal Laziness. When I was in a religous order for 5 years, it was so evident.
Be pious when you pray but leave Scripture and involvement in the great issues and debates to the ‘eggheads”. More basically, praying the Rosary I will try to do my best but cleaning up after dinner, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash — that has no spiritual value so it do it slipshod and barely passaibly — maybe while praying to be a good Christian !!!!!! “I don’t study the Bible.Ijust do unto others…blah, blah, blah.”