This Lent we invited you to go on mission, to take a spiritual checkup of the depth of your love for God. We have been using this key passage from Scripture to guide our reflection:
And one of [the Pharisees], a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:35-40 (emphasis added)
During the first five weeks of Lent, we examined the first and great commandment along with a second that Jesus says “is like it” (1st week, 2nd week, 3rd week, 4th week, 5th week). Today, we look at the last verse of this passage: “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:40).
In giving these two commandments, Jesus is simplifying the Decalogue (10 “Words” or Commandments) given to Moses and the Israelites during their exodus from captivity in Egypt. God’s finger in flaming fire wrote these commandments on two stone tablets. Read what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about this event in salvation history…