Bible Text: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and your neighbour as yourself”
Mark 12. 28-34
Since birth, every Jew is trained to observe the Torah which has 613 laws and decrees. The willingness to obey them was great but they really wanted to discern the profoundness of what they are doing. This is the very reason why this scribe came to Jesus to ask Him the most important among the laws because that most capital law will certainly lead to the spirit of the observance of the several laws. Jesus had perfectly identified the foundation of the commandment, namely, love of God and love of neighbor. It is love that summarizes the various commandments that they ought to fulfill.
The commandments were given to us to give us the direction of what we are searching in our life and in this world. At the bottom of our hearts, that power is deeply seated. This is what we want in life and this is what we want to do in our life. The definition of Jesus about love is definitely not self seeking and self serving. It is rather self giving and other serving. It is bigheartedness and not selfishness. The joy of our heart is not when we get what we want but when we give what we have. This is our desire. It is the power that we have to unearth deep down in our hearts. We call this as the power of love.
It is also remarkable to know that mostly the encounter between Jesus and His detractors tends to misunderstanding and eventually dispute because of their contrasting perspective about particular issues. However, in today’s gospel they agreed with each how Jesus has defined love and how the scribe feels about love. The lesson that we can learn is that if we want unity, talk about love; talk about for your good and it scatters people. This is the world needs right now; not hatred but love; not violence but service; not vengeance but forgiveness; not pride but humility.
The world needs to gaze and listen to the one who was crucified and we will certainly learn and understand what the world is thirsting for right now.