Dearly beloved, to be truly religious is to love God and to love man who is created in the image and likeness of God. In fact, the summary of the bible and the entire law is Love. To love God is to direct our hearts, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions towards the glory of his name. It is to be filled with that reverential fear of God before we take any action as we ask ourselves what God would think in this my action. Hence the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 111:10 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. To Love Man is to cherish and respect every human person, whether poor or rich as creatures of God and see God in them. If you want to be near the kingdom of God and give God a worship that pleases him, practice these two.
Moses in our first reading, drawing the minds of the people of Israel to what it really means to worship Yahweh, cries out; the Lord is one Lord and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and might and these words must be kept upon your hearts and thought to your children from generation to generation so that the blessings which God promised to your fathers might not depart from the land. Overtime, the Jews recognising the importance of this teaching went on to make it their creed, i.e., the foundation upon which Jewish Monotheism or Judaism was built. It became known as the Shema and as such every devout Jew was expected to recite this law at least three times a day and teach it to their children.
In our gospel reading of today, a teacher of the Law having heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees on matters concerning the resurrection, came up to Jesus and put a question to him in a bid to put him to the test. Now in those days, there was a brewing issue, an issue of great debate amongst the Rabbis. The scribes and the Pharisees multiplied the Decalogue, i.e the Ten commandment to 613 precepts, they themselves were not keeping them but expected the people to keep them. Because of the difficulty involved in keeping all the precepts, two schools of thought arose. The first held that all of laws were of equal importance and so, one dared not say one was more important or greater than the other. They believed by saying one was greater would mean the others were less important.
The other school of thought held that the Love of God as stipulated by their Shema was the greatest Law and all others were lighter laws and not so important. It was in the midst of this confusion that this expert brought this subtle question to Jesus to also test him. But Jesus also silenced the scribes and afterwards, no one dared to ask him any question. Jesus in his wisdom weaved together the Shema as given to them by Moses in the first reading of today as the first, that is, the Love of God and immediately went on to add a second; the Love of Neighbour, and they all marvelled. Dearly beloved in Christ, these two commandments are very powerful and are like two sides of the same coin and being two sides of the same coin, they are tied to each other.
It is because we love God and are totally committed to him that we are compelled to love man and it is by loving man that we show we love God for 1 John 4: 20 says if anyone says I love God but hates his brother, he is a liar. How can he love God whom he does not see if he does not love his brother whom he can see? We should therefore know and settle it in our hearts this day that he who has no love in his heart has no business with worshipping God for a heart devoid of love is an abomination in God’s sight. Some of us would claim, ehn I love God; I spend hours in prayer in the chapel of perpetual adoration, I come to confession every month, I receive the Holy communion every day, I am always early for Mass, I pay my Tithe and do offertory every now and then, I read my bible and can quote several passages, I know a lot about the doctrines and teachings of the Church, I attend all the spiritual retreats organised by the Church and always ‘kabash’ and shout Amen to the top of my voice, I am a confirmed Catholic, I am a priest or bishop or Pope but really these are not enough yardsticks to proof our Love for God. They are necessary but are not enough.
We would be doing ourselves a great disservice if we think that being truly religious doesn’t go beyond these practices. The big question is by saying we love God, are we totally committed to him, allowing him to dominate our emotions and direct our thoughts and actions? If we allow him in, then we would find it easy to treat other human beings well and help our neighbours in our society. The love of neighbour is like a mirror through which an individual can access their level of holiness and remember, our neighbour is anyone in need of our help. Dearly beloved, insensitivity is a cankerworm that has eaten through the lives of many Christians of today. I don’t care attitude everywhere; ‘no be my business’. The sin of the rich man was not that he was rich, rather he was insensitive to the plight of poor Lazarus by his gate side.
The soul of the rich fool was demanded from him not because he got his riches from illegal means. No! God blessed the works of his hands and his farmland produced bountifully but rather his crime was that he became so covetous to the extent that he said my soul, eat and drink. Whether we like it or not, the poor would always be with us. In fact, the poor are God’s representative on earth. Don’t be that kind of person that doesn’t want to see the poor people around you; you are always irritated by the poor and always pushing them away. Let us open our eyes and see the plight of the poor in our society today, that there are some children in our society today, even in our churches who have not been in school since this academic session started, there are some families around us who can barely eat two square meal and so many difficult situations around us.
Yes, the economy is biting hard on everyone but in the midst, we should ask, do I at least have some excesses that I can sacrifice for the needy other? We could come together and contribute our token and help the needy in our society today. Do you know why John the Beloved, the writer of the last gospel, at the last supper scene, where other earlier evangelists before him recorded the institution of the Eucharist, that is, Jesus taking bread and wine and offering to his disciples as his body and blood, he did not record that but rather replaced that scene with Jesus taking up a basin and towel to wash the disciples’ feet? Do you know that that scene of the washing of feet is found only in St. John’s gospel and why? John was the last of the apostle to die and he wrote his gospel about sixty to seventy years after Jesus’ death.
This means that he lived to a ripe old age and saw about sixty to seventy years of the Church’s life. He saw the gospels written by other evangelists before him being read during the liturgy at that time. He saw that church members fought about almost everything and especially they fought about the Eucharist. By the time he was writing, he saw that not unlike today, there were a variety of practices around the Eucharist and all kinds of disagreements and abuses about it. Hence, he John knowing that to repeat the scene of the institution of the Eucharist would be otiose; serving no practical result, decided to replace it with the true meaning of the Eucharist which is Love; the act of reaching out and washing the feet of others.
Dear friends, all about the Eucharist is Love and that is why the second reading of today tells us that Jesus Christ holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. The ordained priests of today, every time the Mass is celebrated acts as an Alter Christus, another Christ and re-enacts that one perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross offered out of love for mankind. The Mass is therefore one and the same, a perpetuation, a continuation of the One Sacrifice of Love. I dare to say it that our worship might be rejected in the Mass if we have no love within our hearts. Perhaps, this is why many of us get nothing out of the Mass today and some ministers in a bid to make the Holy Mass ‘more powerful and sweeter to people’s tastes’ sometimes abuse the Mass instead of emphasising the weightier matters of love and righteousness of heart that indeed confirms the power of the Sacred Mass.
We come to the Mass bearing grudges, nursing hatred, orchestrating the downfall of humans and treating humans badly and yet expects blessings from the Mass. He nor work. God is not a party to a heart that is devoid of love for God is love himself. Nigeria is a very blessed country, one supposed to be flowing with milk and honey but the wickedness in the heart of man has made it what it is today. Let the poor, let the poor breath but na you dey suffocate us.
Sadly we live in a time where the resources in the country are not evenly distributed, where the poor continues to get poorer and the rich continues to get richer without caring about the plight of the poor, a time where evil is celebrated, promoted, elected and crowned while those who call it evil are persecuted, a time where justice is bought over with tinted note and sacrificed on the altar of cheap popularity and gains, a time when our naira keeps falling against the dollar because we are being ruled by dullards, a time where ritual killing is the order of the day and the whole country seems to be turning upside down.
All these, because of the lack of love in the heart of man. I would always say life nor suppose hard, na man make am hard for fellow man. The cross wey God give us no suppose too much. Himself talk say, my grace is sufficient for you. Na man make different crosses give am people to carry. How did we get here is the question we all ask but the truth is that we all have a hand in it and in some ways the system has corrupted all of us like how it is difficult to find somebody who is honest and sincere today. The change we desire begins with me and you. Let us open our hearts to love of God and love of man and our world, Nigeria, would change for the better. God bless us.
