In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus quotes the first reading:

Hear, O Israel!
The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!
Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Jesus adds love-of-neighbor to the formula, and the result is a prophetic message that summarizes right living with God and humanity. To say it another way, if we love God with our entire being, we are in relationship with the One who loved us into creation and loved us through every good and bad choice. Such an understanding of how God has loved us, makes it easier to love neighbor through every good and bad moment.

I think it’s safe to say that if we know we are loved – truly loved – by anyone, it is easier to navigate life because we can count on at least one person to encourage, support, and accompany us through thick and thin. We can expect God to love us like no one else can because all that God does is directed to goodness and perfection for His children. On our worst day, we can revel in the abundance of God’s mercy and compassion when it seems like no one else has anything to offer. On our best day we will love God for blessing us. Having received God’s love on our best and worst days, we will be ready to give God’s love as a gift to someone else. This exquisite cycle of receiving and giving love satisfies God’s mandate given to Moses in the verses that follow the passage we hear in this Sunday’s first reading. Here’s what Moses says about the command to love God:

And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart.
And you shall teach them diligently to your children,
and you shall speak of them when you sit at home,
and when you walk along the way,
and when you lie down and when you rise up.
And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand,
and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
And you shall write them.

What does this mean for you and me today? We are asked to create a legacy of love that was first handed down to us from God. The God of love commands us to pass it on to our neighbors so that from generation to generation all relationships will be perfected in the extravagant love that God lavishes on us. Can we say our hearts are ready?

With gratitude for love poured out for our sake by Christ,