Sunday, October 25, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked, \u201cWhich is the first of all the commandments?\u201d Jesus replied, \u201cThe first is this: \u2026 \u2018You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.\u2019 The second is like it: \u2018You shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019\u201d
\u2014Mark 12:28\u201331 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this homily, Father Richard Rohr considers Jesus\u2019s response to the question, \u201cWhich is the first of all the commandments?\u201d: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think any of us really know how to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We might want to love like that, but how do we put all the parts of ourselves together and actually do it? <\/strong>It takes our whole lives to figure out what Jesus\u2019s words might even mean. Then Jesus says, \u201cYou must love your neighbor as you love yourself\u201d (Mark 12:31). Do any of us do that? Do we really love other people? Do we really give them as much attention as we give to ourselves? I don\u2019t think so. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine how different the world would be if we just obeyed that one commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It would be the most mighty political and social upheaval imaginable. The world would be radically different if human beings really treated other people as they would like to be treated. We can take this as a simple rule of thumb: What would I want from that person right now? What would be helpful for me to receive?<\/em>Well, there\u2019s the commandment\u2014our obligation to do for others! <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s so simple that we can see why we put all our attention on the Ten Commandments, or the hundreds of other regulations culture and religion place on us. It\u2019s much easier to worry about things that keep us \u201cpure,\u201d so to speak, but are of little consequence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the scribe is asking a very good question. After all is said and done, it comes down to loving God and loving our neighbor\u2014and that implies loving ourselves. If I said this without quoting Jesus, I could be accused of oversimplifying or ignoring some of the important commandments. Thank God, Jesus said it first. He taught that it\u2019s all about love. In the end, that\u2019s all we\u2019re all going to be judged for<\/strong>. Did we love? Did we love life? Did we love ourselves? Did we love God? Did we love our neighbor? Concentrating on love takes just about our whole lifetime, so we won\u2019t have much time left over to worry about what other people are doing or not doing. Our job is to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbor. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Loving God, Self, and Others Sunday, October 25, 2026 One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked, \u201cWhich is the first of all the commandments?\u201d Jesus replied, \u201cThe first is this: \u2026 \u2018You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27803,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27802\/revisions\/27803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}