PARISH NEWS

THAT’S ALL FOLKS

Love God, love neighbour! (Mark 12:28-34) That’s it? Surely Jesus, you’ve missed something here!

What about all the holocausts and sacrifices, traditional rules and regulations, deciding who to love and who to condemn? We can’t simply love God and everyone else! That would include non-Catholics, non-Christians, sinners and even atheists! Surely Jesus, folk need to be ruled by fear: fear of a vengeful creator, fear of the world around them? If we followed this “love” notion then people would feel liberated. Soon they might even stop following the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses. It would be mayhem!

What’s that? So the Ten Commandments and Moses’ Law are because we wouldn’t follow this Great Commandment! And all the other rules we’ve devised are subject to it also? Perhaps at times we have created “a religion of rules alone [which] can imply faith in a God who only punishes, not a God who creates. Rather than a religion leading its followers to the God who gives them what the universe is for, they wind up with the religion of a God who can only give them what-for” (Consolmagno, G. God’s Mechanics Jossey-Bass 2008, p75.).

Certainly Jesus, you’ve modelled this Great Commandment for us in your own loving non-judgemental actions and healing, your compassion for the least, your preference for the poor. Your teaching is all about the Kingdom of God. Honouring and worshipping the Father.

So how would this work, Jesus?  You are calling us to love and worship God as we see and hear him amid his creation, delighting in and cherishing the natural world in which we find ourselves; the enormity of the universe, the planets and stars down to the smallest of creatures and proclaiming this astounding Good News of God’s Kingdom in which all are cherished and valued, just as they are. Are you sure? Ok – if you say so!

Deacon Mark Kelly