Dear Friends,

Since this weekend, my focus is on addressing the state of our parish at all Masses, so I decided to give a brief reflection on the liturgy of this 31st Sunday of Year B. Whereas the readings of this weekend focus primarily on Love: Love of God and Love of neighbor, my mind was drawn to the title of this article. I think this is for a good reason: who or what we love greatly influences our worship. Who and what do we worship in our society today?

You see, we live in a culture and a world that worships many different idols. There are all kinds of things and activities that have become the primary focus and preoccupation of our lives, in other words, our gods. What are these gods? What is our predominant preoccupation currently, as we are in the midst of the election season? Is it God or our political affiliations? Is it money or is it power? Is it pleasure or prestige? In truth, these seem to be the most prominent idols that our culture worships today. To be sure, none of these things I mentioned are bad or evil in themselves. They only become the gods we worship when they replace the worship of the One, True, Lord God of the Universe.

I suspect you are all familiar with the recent poll, which indicates that only 30% of Americans now attend church services on a weekly basis. And worse, there are those who do not believe that God exists at all! This is the danger about which Moses warned the chosen people who were about to enter and take possession of the Promised Land in the first reading. Moses knew that the pagan gods of that land would pose a great temptation.

These pagans had a variety of gods for things such as for fertility and for war. The sun, the moon, and the mountains were all considered gods. Some of those gods were worshiped with human sacrifices, and at least one other, by prostitution! So, Moses proclaimed that the “Lord was their God. The Lord alone!” They were to worship none of the other pseudo-gods with their false promises. He insisted that true worship was to be through love itself and that love is to flow from a person’s entire being, meaning, heart, soul, and body! Of course, from history, we know that they were often very unfaithful, but when they were faithful, they prospered. However, when they were not, they always began to self-destruct!

In the Gospel of Mark, the scribe who came to Jesus seemed to be a good and sincere man. He truly lived a God-centered life. However, the Pharisees and scribes had multiplied the ten commandments into 613 precepts, many of which were about the prescribed sacrifices made in offering to God. The scribe wanted to know which one was the most important of all. So, in response, Jesus quoted from the Book of Deuteronomy. “The Lord our God is Lord alone!” He deliberately changed the wording to emphasize that no other god even exists! And like Moses, he insisted that we too, are to love this One, True God with our whole being, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength!

However, there was another commandment that was second and also more important than all the others, he says. It was “to love our neighbor as we love ourselves!” Then, the scribe agreeably concluded that loving God and others was truly, most important. These two commandments were more important than any of the lesser things that the Law commanded them to do!

Dear friends, our lives today, as I pointed out, are filled with things that compete for our time, our energy, and our personal resources. These are not necessarily bad or evil things, but the more we pursue them as an end in themselves, the more they interfere with what we should be for God, for others, or for our physical or mental well-being and take us away from the true God. So, to counter this and to personally prevail, we must remember that Moses also urged the people to fear the Lord God. However, this must be a holy fear. And a holy fear includes a sense of awe, a sense of wonder! Because if we have an awe-filled –and wonder-filled with our love for God, we will never put anything before this God of Love who created us! Through our love for the Eucharist and our Mother Mary, may we always be drawn closer to the love of God and of our neighbor.

I love you!

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