John writes to us:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another (1 John 4:7-11).
God loved us first, and out of His love, He sent the Son. So out response to His love is to love. And to love, in response to God’s love is only to love God but also those who are created in God’s triune image (Genesis 1:26-27), whom we consider as our neighbors. Without love, as John says above, we really do not know God. If we did not know God, then, how could we love Him right?
God is love (1 John 4:8,16), indeed, and His love has been revealed to us through the Son (1 John 4:9) and poured into us through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). That is why we are God’s beloved, as John calls us so.
Through the First Reading (Deuteronomy 6:2-6) and the Gospel Reading (12:28b-34) of the 31str Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B, we are reminded our love, in response to God’s love for us, is two-fold: to love God and to love our neighbors.
In the Gospel Reading (Mark 12:28b-34), a Scribe asks Jesus what the most important command in the law is. To this, Jesus answers:
The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).
In the first part: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’(vv. 29-30), Jesus quotes Moses’s shemah commandment to the Israelites:
Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
The most important commandment to love God with our all hearts, with our all souls, and with all our minds, and with all our strengths, because He alone is the Lord, is known as shema command, and it is of Jewish daily shema prayer. The Hebrew word, “shema”( שָׁמַע) means “to hear”.
“The Lord is our God, the Lord alone”(Deuteronomy 6:4) reflects the first commandment of the Decalogue:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not have other gods beside me (Exodus 20:2-3).
Moses specifically instructs the Israelites to attentively pray with this commandment multiple times everyday, and to teach their children, and to bind what is heard: the Lord alone is God and to love God with our total being on their arms, hang these on their foreheads, and write these words on their doorposts, as they take these to their hearts (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).
Jesus teaches that the most important commandment (mitzvah) out of 613 commandments (mitzvot) in Torah is to love God with our total being (Deuteronomy 6:5), and the second important one is to love our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). It means, if we truly love God with our whole hearts, and with our whole souls, and with our whole strengths, we also love our neighbors as ourselves.
The one who teaches commandments of love this way is Jesus, who is the supreme and eternal high priest, unlike a Levite high priest, a descendant of Aaron, as described in the Second Reading (Hebrews 7:23-28). Because Jesus is the eternal high priest of the order of Melchizedek, as described in the Second Reading of the 30th Sunday (Hebrews 5:1-6), he does not need to offer Yom Kippur sacrifice year after year, because not only he is the eternal high priest but also he offered himself as the sacrifice for atonement once for all (Hebrew 7:27; cf. 9:25-26).
It is important to note that Jesus’ eternal and supreme priesthood is beyond the law, because God appointed him to be the eternal priest of the Melchizedek’s order not under the law but by his direct oath (Hebrews 7:28). In fact, this eternal high priest, not under the law, Jesus the Christ, has come to fulfill both the Law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17). And he has given us the new commandment, which is to love one another as he has loved us, for observing this commandment of love makes us his disciples (John 13:34-35).
So it is Jesus’ way to fulfill the most important commandment to love God (Deuteronomy 6:5) with the second important commandment to love our neighbors (Leviticus 19:18). Observing this set of important commandments means that we truly love God in response to His love for us (1 John 4:7-19). And Paul reminds us that without love, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, our faith, and our work of it, would be in vein (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). And the supreme commandment to love is two-fold: to love God and to love our neighbors, as Jesus has fulfilled.
The background of the Gospel Reading (Mark 12:28-34) is as below.
After restoring sight of Bartimaeus as he was leaving Jericho, as described in the Gospel Reading of the 30th Sunday (Mark 10:46-52), Jesus and his disciples kept moving forward to Jerusalem, to suffer, die, and to be raised.
Now Jesus is in Jerusalem (i.e. Mark 11:1-11). He foresees the destruction of this corrupted Temple, being reduced to a den of thieves (Mark 11:17). So he metaphorically puts it as a barren fig tree that he cursed (Mark 11:12-14). He cleanses the Temple (Mark 11:15-17). This has intensified religious leaders’ hostility toward Jesus (Mark 11:18) and prompted them to question his authority (Mark 11:27-33). Jesus is fully aware of their intention to kill him. So he spoke the parable of the wicked tenant vineyard worker to address these religious leaders iniquitous hearts (Mark 12:1-12). Then, some Pharisees and Herodians tried to trap Jesus in his own words by asking him a question of paying tax but they failed (Mark 12:13-17). After this, some Sadducees, who did not believe resurrection, tried to make Jesus contradict his teaching of resurrection but failed (Mark 12:18-27). Then, a Scribe asked Jesus his view on the most important commandment, as described in the Gospel Reading of the 31st Sunday (Mark 12:28-34).
After this, nobody dared to challenge Jesus (Mark 12:34).
