TO LOVE IS TO SACRIFICE OUR LIVES FOR GOD AND OTHERS.
1st Reading: Deuteronomy 6:2-6; 2nd Reading: Hebrews 7:23-28; Gospel: Mark 12:28-34
In our contemporary world, many people are always longing for peace, tranquility, prosperity, happiness and God’s blessings in their lives. They always want to be loved and cared for, and also to acquire the best in the world. However, some of them fail to unlock the gate which paves way for such stupendous blessings from God, even when they know it.
In the FIRST READING, Moses explored the meaning of God’s commandment which should be obeyed, in order to gain divine blessings. He told the Israelites to always remember God (One Eternal and Supreme Being), who out of His infinite love and mercy, saved them from bondage in Egypt. He exhorted them with the great SHEMA. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).” He urged them to remain faithful to Him, have reverence for Him and not apostatize.
Meanwhile, this Shema is the Jewish confession of faith, which, together with appropriate prayers, forms an integral part of their morning and evening services; with a call to learn, to study and to observe God’s commandments. It is the bedrock of deuteronomic theology in which love is almost synonymous with obedience to God’s will, which paves the way for prosperity (physical & Spiritual), but disobedience to God’s will leads to curse and death.
In the GOSPEL, in response to the scribe’s cunning question, Jesus quoted the SHEMA as the greatest and the first of the commandments, and the second is: “You shall love your neighbour (God’s Creature) as yourself (Mark 12:31).” These underscore the basic inner dispositions of the disciples. Besides, to know and understand God’s commandments like the scribe, which are the prerequisite for gaining divine blessings and subsequently, eternal life; are not enough. But practicing them out of love, with great reverence and obedience gives us full access to divine blessings and eternal life. Yes, we should obey God out of love, and not necessarily for fear of eternal damnation.
Moreover, to have reverence for God means to place oneself in front of Him in attitude of self-giving and trust, and of acceptance of His divine will. This confronts us with great urgency, and demands a personal response, which is faith in God as well as reciprocating the love He has showered upon us, by giving us His beloved Son Jesus Christ, who, out of love, sacrificed His life in order to redeem humankind. To love Him also means to accept His gifts, share in His plan for humanity, that is, salvation of souls (salus animarum), and to become instruments of His genuine Love for humanity.
The SECOND READING highlights how Jesus Christ, the Superior High Priest, out of love and obedience to God, humbly and patiently sacrificed His life, and bore His sufferings in order to save humanity. His sacrificial death on the cross has obtained once and for all, an everlasting freedom for all mankind. Moreover, His priesthood (new order), which is heavenly, eternal and spiritual in nature, is being contrasted with that of the Aaron’s priesthood (old order), which was earthly, temporal and carnal. His self-offering for our sins is not to be repeated, unlike the old order where the high priests offered daily or yearly sacrifices for their sins and for the people, but His sacrifice has been made perfect forever.
As a proof of God’s Love for us, Christ died for us even while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). So, anyone who claims to love, sacrifices of his or her time, energy, resources, etc, should be the basis for such love. Remove the sacrifices, then there is no love, and where there is no love, there is no Christianity. These will definitely pave way for God’s blessings, prosperity and finally eternal life.
Finally, since Christ has suffered for us out of love, we too should emulate His footsteps and reciprocate that love, by obeying God’s commandments which hinge on: love of God and love of neighbour. In fact, the proof of our love for God is the love we show to our fellow human beings. For we cannot claim to love God whom we have not seen while we hate our fellow human beings, it is not true (1 John 4:20). Loving our neighbor means to sacrifice our life for their wellbeing, and to always forgive them when they offend us. These are what pave the way for stupendous blessings from God and eternal life at the end.
PRAYER:
I pray that the Almighty God, through the Power of the Holy Spirit, may grant you the grace to Love Him and your fellow human beings sincerely, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen!!!
Peace of Christ be with you…
Rev. Fr. Ben Okala, C.S.Sp.
Dramatized Audio Bible
Amen. May God grant me the enabling grace to love purely and unconditionally, everyone and God above anything. Amen.
Amen. Thank you very much my dear sister Stella. Receive the Anointing Power of the Holy Ghost, Amen
We cannot claim to love God while we don’t manifest that in our fellow human beings. Thanks Fr for reminding us once again the need for genuine love. We pray for God’s Grace to live a life loving our neighbours as ourselves in order to gain eternal life. Amen ?
Amen! I thank God! Thank you very much my dear Lady Ngozi. May God bless you, Amen.
Google Scholar: ACTUALIZATION AND INTERPRETATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. Meaning, the rabid racism of messiah theology and its total negation of all heresy otherwise.
GROVES, JOSEPH WHITE.Yale University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1979. 7926245.
[[[“””Wilhelm Vischer and Hans Hellbart do not merely separate the historical and the theological, but virtually eliminate the role of historical investigation by advocating Christological exegesis. In essence their approach is a return to a pre-critical Reformation theology which views the Old and New Testaments as a unified structure. The element which creates this unity is the pervading presence of the Messiah. The New Testament interprets the Old as Messianic prophecy and this interpretation is confirmed by a study of the Old Testament as a whole. Indeed, the true nature of the Old Testament is apparently only when one recognizes the pre-existence of Christ as the head of the Old Testament church. Consequently, both the unity of the Bible and the cause of that unity are beyond the scope of historical investigation, which can only end in confusion and uncertainty. One must approach the Old Testament through theological affirmation.”””]]].
The divorce by alien Goyim Europeans of Jewish Common law formats exposes the extreme prejudice of Christological exegesis, which defines the theology expressed through the bloody period known as the Reformation. Goyim theological insanity limits the “Old Testament” as faith prior to JeZeus. Later attempts by Xtain “scholars” in the 19th Century and there after, their critical examination of the historicity of Biblical texts makes a total dissolution of Jewish cultures and customs which produced Talmudic Common Law together with its Midrashic interpretations made upon Aggaditah – the understanding of prophetic mussar NaCH Common Law! The prejudice and racial dishonesty of these arrogant aliens and utterly foreign “scholars”, merits nothing short of complete and total contempt.
The underlying racism expressed by these “scholars”, it directly compares to the European mass murder of black slaves, the oppression and genocide of the Jewish and Roma minorities in Europe during the 20th Century. Notions of a Nazi superior race did not just pop into the minds of European barbarians, comparable to “Gee I could have had a V-8”. Xtian barbaric theology pre-programmed the European mind to simply assume that white Europeans had a destiny mandate to rule the inferior dark skinned races of the earth. Comparable to the American “Manifest Destiny” which justified the genocide of the Indian natives. No European Court has ever convicted Church Priests and Pastors for their guilt of promoting mass hysteria & war crimes.
To expect justice from European Courts, pigs would sooner dance the Polka! The Jewish State of Israel must strive to develop an economic alliance with the States of the Middle East and North Africa, which excludes all European political influence among and within this trading block alliance. Something like as happened between the NATO and Warsaw Pact opposing alliances which prevailed throughout the period of the Cold War. The States of the Warsaw Pact rejected all economic aid, which the Marshal Plan employed as a carrot to justify the US military occupation of Western European countries. France rejected membership in NATO in 1966, in order to foist the lie that France ruled Europe as a Great Power.
This French deception alone merits why the Jewish State must reject French UN Resolution 242, and all similar UN attempts to determine the international borders and Capital City of the Jewish State; its membership within the States of the Middle East and North Africa. Building a stable trade route which connects Algeria with Egypt, represents a key strategic objective of the Jewish State. To establish major trading centers along this route require Climate Change – a policy that causes the Desert to bloom.
Israeli education of Arab stateless refugee populations needs to change its focus. Much like Kennedy’s Moon race program switched education priorities from the Humanities to the Sciences. Arab stateless refugee populations within Israel, require a narrow focus upon Agricultural expertise and experience. North African States, once the Desert blooms, Israel should export the agricultural expertise of Arab stateless refugees to develop and farm the North African Sahara grass lands by having these exported Arabs, to plant trees upon all the hills across North Africa and Egypt.
The rapid deforestation of the rain forests in the Brazilian Amazon and South America, requires a massive counter-response. Something like the Ottoman Turks expressed their sincere thanks to monarchy of Spain: for the Spanish Inquisition, together with the forced expulsion of Jewish refugee populations from that barbaric kingdom of primitive sub-humans.
[[[“””This method, called pneumatic exegesis, harkens back to the work of J.C.K. von Hofmann in the nineteenth century. While these scholars recognize both the validity and the value of the historical-critical method, they regard it as an inadequate basis for theological interpretation. They attempt to connect the two by proposing that the Old Testament has a real history, which may be discovered to a great extent by historical inquiry, but which is given theological import through selective and specialized interpretation. This specialized exegesis centers upon a view of Old Testament history as Heilsgeschichte (an interpretation of history emphasizing God’s saving acts and viewing Jesus Christ as central in redemption Love words), in which the events have a typological significance that reveals Christ as the consummation of the entire Biblical message. This spiritual element is not present or is not easily elucidated for many portions of the Old Testament, so the interpreter must select those passages most easily conducive to pneumatic exegesis for special emphasis. Thus, Procksch’s method leads to the devaluation of some parts of the Old Testament and the enhancement of others by his varied and peculiar combinations of the historical-critical method and spiritual emphasis.”””]]]
The Pauline precedent imposed a ?????? ?????? upon all generations of Goyim, swayed by this narishkeit nonsense which declares the Law of Moses as invalid and lacking spiritual authority over Goyim. William Tyndale, a famous Bibilical reformer, declared his understanding of Mosaic Law, the nature of man and Paul’s doctrine of sin and righteousness. Tyndale declared: “We are sinners not because we break the law; we break the law because we are sinners.” As the Xtian prejudice term “Old Testament” invalidates the authority of the T’NaCH, so too Paul’s doctrine of ‘Original sin’ by Adam, it invalidated the T’NaCH priority emphasis — to rule the oath sworn lands with justice.
Making the guilt association of Sin the dominant theme of Xtian spirituality, resulted in oppression and anarchy which dominated barbaric European societies for kilo-years! The rule of law, or lack thereof; it imposes the stamp of Order and Society, contrasted by Feudalism and anarchy, upon all European Civilizations. A society whose courts of law define State corruption and misrule, like as expressed by the Cheney\Bush criminals who illegally invaded foreign countries and conducted torture of abducted and captured prisoners, exposes the US as a society suffering from an advanced state of social anarchy and decay. Advanced technology serves only as a concealment cover for this sorry state of internal domestic affairs. Wherein citizens, as a matter of routine, make mass murder of other US citizens without reason or cause.
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