Rules of the Road

Rules are a necessary part of life. As much as we may not like the idea of them, we all know implicitly that we need them. I realized this in a very concrete way when I visited South America about a decade ago. Immediately after getting off the plane, our group hopped in a taxi to get to our hotel. What followed was nothing short of a near-death experience. I quickly came to appreciate how many laws about driving we have here in the U.S., since I saw what it looked like – and what it felt like – to not have them at all. 

In the Gospel today, a scribe asks Jesus about his understanding of rules. He’s not interested in transportation though but in the rules that govern our relationship with God – what we call commandments. In the Jewish religion, there were 613 commandments – 365 commandments to not do something and 248 commandments to do something. With so many rules, it was a matter of discussion and debate about which were the most important. The scribe comes to Jesus to ask him how he sees things.

The scribe comes to Jesus because he understands him to be a teacher, perhaps a prophet, certainly someone that others followed and respected. But our Gospel writer St. Mark also wants us to see Jesus as someone greater than these human attributes. He wants us to understand Jesus as the one whom Mark has been slowly revealing him to be throughout his Gospel: namely, the Messiah of the Jewish people and, even more, God-in-the-Flesh. As we wait for Jesus to respond then, we understand that his response will not just be the opinion of another human being; we are about to hear God himself tell us what he values as the most important rule governing our relationship with him. Jesus is not just describing the commandment, he is the One who pronouncing it to us anew.

So, what does Jesus say? On the one hand, what he says is perfectly expected: “you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” This prayer is called the Shema, from the Book of Deuteronomy and which we heard in our first reading. It is at the very heart of the Jewish faith. As a good Jew, Jesus would have recited it every morning and every evening. It’s also the prayer that some Jews place on small scrolls outside the doorposts of their homes or even wear in bands on their heads and arms. For Jesus to be asked “What is the first commandment?” and to respond with the Shema is not in the least surprising.

What is surprising is that he quickly adds a second commandment. “To love your neighbor as yourself” is a commandment that comes from the Book of Leviticus, but in no way was it considered to be on the same level as the commandment to love God with your whole being. Jesus is at the same time affirming the core principle of the Jewish faith, while also updating it, intensifying it, re-contextualizing it in light of all that he has come to reveal. He shows that the love of God and love of neighbor are inextricably linked together, and that if we try to do one without the other, we will fail at both. If we try to love God without loving other people, we risk becoming fanatical and closed off from the needs of people in the real world around us. If we love other people without loving God, our love will devolve into relativistic sentiment, unable to truly know what is for another person’s good since we’ve lost sight of the Source of all good. It turns out that in order to do either one, we have to do both – to love God with our whole being, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

These two loves can seem very abstract, but believe it or not, each time we come to Mass, we have the opportunity to put into practice exactly those two things. The Mass, at its heart, is not about being uplifted in spirit, or hearing an informative or inspiring homily. Those things are good, but they are secondary to the act of worship that we make to God – as the Body of Christ, we offer worship through Jesus to the heavenly Father. If at no other time during our week, the Mass is our best opportunity to remember how the love of God should be at the very heart of who we are and all that we do.

The Mass also offers us the chance to deepen our love of others. We pray for those whom we know who are in need, we practice charity to those who are around us, we remember our beloved dead and we pray for them especially in this month of November. Perhaps more than anything, we pray for wisdom so that God can show us how he wants us to practice love of him and love of neighbor in concrete ways, in the situations and circumstances of our daily lives, according to the vocation to which he has called us or is calling us.

Friends, the commandments of God – and those of the Church as well – are not given to us to be oppressive and restrictive. Rather they are like rules of the road for our souls: they help us to be well that which God has created us to be. Each time we come to Mass we learn anew how to praise God in and through Jesus our Lord, and we learn how to let his love take root in us so that we can love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus doesn’t just command this of us – he comes to us in the Holy Eucharist to help us achieve it. Let us turn our minds and hearts toward our loving God, in praise of him, and in gratitude for the ways that he enables us to accomplish all that he has commanded.