"You shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart, and with all your soul

and with all your mind....

You shall love your neighbour as yourself"

Dear Friends:

Today’s Mass has a very simple and yet the most profound message of all: In the end it all boils down to how much we LOVE, both God and our neighbour. Yet, some seem to think that one can love their neighbour in an abstract kind of way. Our first reading spells out clearly that the Lord expects us to help each other in the very practical applications of daily life: feed one another, give to those who are poor, do what you can to help those who need to be liberated from the chains of poverty. Nothing manifests more profoundly that God hears the cry of the poor than when we, the Mystical Body of Christ, care for all peoples.

In the second century A.D., Aristides, a non-Christian, defended the Christians before the Emperor Hadrian in the following words:

"Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If a man has something, he gives freely to the man who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother. They don’t consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God. And if they hear that one of them is in jail or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs. This is really a new kind of person. There is something divine in them."

May our gathering in the Lord’s Name this weekend, strengthen us in our love for God and our neighbour. May the motto for our lives once again be: "And they’ll know we are Christians by our Love".

Deacon Michael Soentgerath