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…
One of the most ancient and revered prayers of a pious and observant Jew, is the Shema Yisrael. It is prayed in the morning and evening service and is the last words that are spoken before sleep and the first words that are taught to a child. Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! This prayer is a solemn remembrance in the oneness of God which was Israel gift to the world.
We must never forget that Jesus was a pious Jew for whom the Shema Yisrael was ever on his lips. Yet, as the eternal Word of the Father, he revealed a radical new understanding of God’s oneness as creator, redeemer and sanctifier.
In Mark’s gospel today, Jesus joins the ancient Shema with the two-fold radical command that summarizes the teaching of the ‘law and the prophets.’ To love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourselves captures the essence of the Judeo-Christian ethic.
We Catholics pride ourselves in a rich theological tradition from the Fathers of the Church to the scholastics to the theologians of our modern age. Yet, we must never forget that all these volumes that have been written are in reality merely commentary on that two-fold command: to love God with all that we are and have and to love our neighbor as ourselves!