Excerpt Scriptures from the Lectionary choices for Nov. 3
Deuteronomy 6 Fear the LORD, your God, and keep, throughout the days of your lives,
all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you, and thus have long life.
Hear then, Israel, and be careful to observe them, that you may grow and prosper the more,
in keeping with the promise of the LORD, the God of your fathers, to give you a land flowing with milk and honey. “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Gospel One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this: 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.
The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Keep respecting the Lord. This is the message of Deuteronomy 6 and of the Gospel with the end of Mark 12 and Christ’ words. How do you do so? Love and honor Him.
We use this pair of words in the Matrimony rite. Will you, groom/bride, love and honor them, your beloved, for all the days of your life? Will you love as the highest desire of the will? Not just as you feel, but as you will? For better or worse, sickness or in health, etcetera. You are commanded to love them, even as yourself, or your other half of a whole now.
Will you honor them? This would be that awe of a gift of that person being given to you. They give themselves to you—be in awe of this full gift and surrender. And do so to them, the same. Marriage speaker and author of books Gary Smalley would give conferences with an example of awe by giving an old fiddle looking instrument to people in the front row of his talks. It had the strings purposely off, and it looked a bit worn or used. He asked those who were holding the instrument in turns to regard it very cautiously and carefully. After that took a look at it, Gary explained to the conference crowd that this”thing” he had handed out was a friend’s possession that was getting renewed and repaired soon back for mint condition, but now it looked a bit ordinary. He asked what they thought it was worth. Some guessed hundreds—guessing a trick coming. Some guessed thousands, even—while it looked like a washed up fiddle. Then Gary explained that it was a Strativarius violin and would be worth again to $250,000 or more. With some loving attention by its owner and some violin renewers.
Gary said that this surprise coming with that revelation was meant to apply with the phrase “I will honor you” in a Matrimony rite. I will show you awe for the gift that you are—and given to me to care for. I will care for you with a sense of honor in getting to do it.
We are given love from God and we are marvelously made as Ps. 139 says to be a work of The Lord that He can delight in and have us become the finished wonder one day. If God so honors us, then can we honor one another in these commitments of life like marriage? Smalley says it would be nice if some couples could show it.
The Scriptures today are what the Jews call the Shema—the fundamental call to love our One God with heart, soul, will, mind, and strength. That’s the vertical , and then Jesus says to offer this divine romance to be a horizontal experiences with others—spreading love around.
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It’s great when some of this love and honor is seen in marriages, but it’s not limited to that.
But let me use it as today’s one example. In doing some marriage prep over the years, and especially when I have had the time to do it with a couple, and they also have high interest in receiving something substantial—then we prove into books like understanding differences, as in reading Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. Or Men are like Waffles and Women are like Spaghetti. Have you read either? It revealing and a little humorous, too.
Another popular marriage book is The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and in it he writes about various “love languages” by which people communicate love. He suggests there is a distinct personal way every person gives and/or receives love. Words of affirmation, physical affection, gift-giving, service, time, and opening opportunity are various ways love is communicated, flowing out and flowing in. His point in the book is that to have a healthy relationship, you need to learn your partner’s love language and communicate love in a way that speaks to the one love. It’s a book that has meant something to several couples.
It got me thinking about my own single life, or how we all are individuals being loved by God and could we wonder: What is God’s love language? One answer I have to it is that God communicates His love in a very clear and definitive way. John 3:16-17 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world to save us through him.” Later, the same author wrote a letter in 1st John 4:8-9 saying, “God is love… in this Love sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
God’s love is Jesus. God’s love is real and meant for us, truly, and even in a life-saving way. God’s love had a cost, but it was meant to move us to not hold back but to return love to Him.
One of the key ways to do so is what we are doing here—praying a Mass and joining into Jesus’ Mystery and presenting ourselves to God the Father as through the Son and by the Spirit.
This is pleasing to God and it touches God in the manner of His love message revealed.
We are to be presented to God as the wedded bride to Christ the Son and Lord God. This is the plan. You are in a heavenly marriage preparation in your Catholic faith for the final nuptial union. So say I love you God, today—and put it in your faithful reception of the Eucharist.
If you are in some situation of not receiving Eucharist, then make a spiritual act of Communion. Give yourself to God via this altar and Christ’ to the Father—and it will be still profound.
Link up your love of God to your presence here right now. Like the man asked Jesus and was pleased to see Jesus link the First Commandment to the love others command—link up your love of God with this Eucharist and what we are doing here as Church, or Christ’ body, and what we are meant to be and do when we go live our week out in Jesus’ Name.