Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Deuteronomy 6:2-6
Psalm 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 12:28-34
The theology of this passage from Mark matters. Obviously so does its place within the extended debates of rabbis and theologians, arguments now millennia old. “Which is the first of all the commandments?” the scribe asks Jesus (Mark 12:28).
His answer, woven together from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, is profound and powerful. To interpret it properly one must dive into the deepest seas of the Scripture. This is one of those passages one studies, meditates upon and takes deep into mind and heart. It is an awesome passage, as exegetically rich in its meanings as it is mystical in its power.
But that isn’t what I want to talk about, not this time around at least. Sometimes, what I find more urgent is not the context of the reading but the context of the reader. Now the context of the reading is not to be neglected; without it, there simply is nothing to understand. Yet sometimes it happens that a certain passage of the Scripture confronts a certain place and time with such force that it seems as if the Scripture is speaking immediately in the present.
That is, sometimes when reading the Scripture, it seems as if the passage is speaking directly into my world, directly to me. That happens sometimes with the Scripture. It just hits you like that, like when St. Antony of Egypt heard that passage from Matthew about being perfect and then immediately disappeared into the desert (The Life of Antony, 2). It’s as if the Bible is speaking just to you.
What I am talking about is what the Church calls the “moral sense” of the Scripture (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 115-118). It’s a sense that causes one to think the Scripture is somehow speaking directly to you, confronting you, convicting you. Like when reading Matthew 25, St. Gregory of Nazianzus said, “I stand in terror of his left hand, and the goats” (Oration 14.39). He read the passage as if Matthew was warning him, calling him to change, calling him to serve the poor.
The moral sense of the Scripture does not allow us to read the Bible as bystanders. Interpretation and theology are not discarded in this experience; rather, they are converted into urgency and action. All the safety of speculation is gone, replaced with the brute demand of obedience.
Again, that’s the way I encounter this passage from Mark, at least this time around. I read this dialogue between Jesus and the scribe as a contemporary moral call. “Which is the first of all the commandments?” It is to love God with everything you have – heart, soul, mind and strength. But it’s also to love your neighbor as yourself. This, I suggest, is God’s word for November 2024. This is what God is saying to us today. This is exactly what he wants us to hear.
Which, if you ask me, is a powerful word for us to hear right now. Here in a divided country at the boiling point of a divisive election, this is what God wants us to hear: that we should not forget that the greatest commandment is to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. Whatever our party, whatever the issue, no matter the frustration, to love God and our neighbor is our first task, the first thing God commands us to do.
Which is, for us Catholics, our primary civic contribution. This – aside from the innumerable misinterpretations of Romans 13 – is fundamentally what St. Paul meant. “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another” (Romans 13:8).
A few years ago, the French philosopher, Jean-Luc Marion called it our “Catholic moment.” He said it was the “political originality of Christians,” the way we bear witness to the world what “communion” really is by the way we love God, each other, and the stranger. Again, aside from who you think it critically important to vote for, this is your graver responsibility – what and who you love.
Really, it may be a miracle, providence at least, that this is what Catholics all over the world – American Catholics especially – will hear this Sunday, that their most important task is to love. It’s as if this is exactly what God wants to say to us right now, what he wants to give us – a word of love so different from the loud worldly words that are wearing us down. The only question is whether we will listen.
(Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” and other books.)
