With All You Heart, Soul, and Mind

0:00 Peace be with you, friends. Our gospel is from the 22nd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. It's kind of a conclusion to a pretty rancorous section where Jesus has been doing battle with the scribes and Pharisees. And this passage kind of brings that great argument to a conclusion. And it does so in a kind of interesting way, because one of the teachers of the law, you know, says to him, Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest? Now, this was an old move within kind of rabbinic circles, was to challenge someone. Can you sum up the richness and complexity of the law in one statement? How would you sum this whole thing up? And so they're testing him to see, well, how is this new rabbi, Jesus, able to do this? And so when he gives his answer here, we're on pretty holy ground because it's not just one rabbi among many answering this central question. It's the Lord. It's the word made flesh telling us what's at the very heart of the matter.

1:06 So listen, any Christian, any spiritually alert person should be really, really attentive to what's being said here. So here's what he says. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first of the commandments. Now, in a way, there's nothing new here. He's repeating the Shema prayer, right? Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is the Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God, right? This great prayer of ancient Israel that's repeated to this day by pious Jews many times a day, the Shema, the central defining prayer. But then, of course, the Lord adds, this is the greatest, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and prophets, that means from the entirety of the scripture, depend upon these two commandments. Okay, we're holy ground. The Word made flesh is telling us what is absolutely basic. So, let's just get after this now a little bit.

2:15 You shall love the Lord your God with every power in you, heart, mind, soul. This is the ordering of the whole of your life toward the summum bonum. If I can put that in more philosophical language, what's the highest good? There's all kinds of goods. I'm surrounded right now by all kinds of good things, things that are attractive to the will, things that are full of ontological integrity. You know, watching a baseball game is good. Sunset is good. A car that's operating properly is good.

2:54 But the good to the world are arranged in a kind of hierarchy. We can notice good, better, best. In regard to anything, that's a better golf swing than that one. That's a better played baseball game. That's a more beautiful, right, statue. do. So we see the goods of the world's arranged in a kind of hierarchical way. But then there's the summum bonum, the highest good, the highest good, God. That in which nothing greater can be thought, St. Anselm says, of God. The highest reality, the supreme reality, ipsum esse, Thomas Aquinas says, the sheer act of to be itself. So at the summit of all possible goods, there's the sumum bonum of God. What's the greatest commandment is to order your life toward that good. What's our basic problem? We order our lives toward lesser goods.

4:01 Now, it's not denying that they're good, nor that we should pay no attention to them. It's just that you don't order your life and your powers in the direction of anything less than God. What goes wrong with us? That, that's Augustine's diagnosis. I mistake a creature for the creator, period.

4:26 You should love the Lord your God, the sumum bonum, with your whole mind, whole heart, whole soul. Okay. So the first problem that we're dealing with implicitly is the distraction by lesser goods. I get preoccupied with lesser goods. All right. But press it even further, that you shall love the Lord with everything in you. Here's how St. Bernard of Clairvaux, by the way, one of the great masters in the spiritual life. I remember my thesis director in Paris, Michel Corbin, great theologian, was a great specialist in Bernard. And we read a lot of Bernard when I was a student in Paris, and he loved him. But here's Bernard's take on the goal of the spiritual life. Listen. Solum deligere deum propter ipsum solum. That means to love God alone for the sake of God alone.

5:25 So love the Lord your God, yeah, yeah, for the sake of God alone. Now, what does he mean? Well, he means maybe you're not distracted by these lower goods, but you're loving God, not with your whole heart, soul, and mind. But you're playing a kind of game whereby you're loving God for some other reason. Now, what's he talking about? Well, he makes a helpful distinction here, and it's echoed in a lot of the spiritual teachers. He distinguishes between the kind of love that a slave has for his master, the kind of love a student has for his teacher, and the kind of love that a spouse has for his spouse.

6:25 Now, what's he talking about? Well, let's take a slave who obeys his master, exhibiting thereby a kind of love, a kind of ordering toward his master. But it's done out of fear, basically, that if I don't obey this master, he's going to kill me or he's going to punish me in some way. It's sort of servile fear. and then think of a student vis-a-vis a teacher and maybe the student really admires the teacher and listens to him and attends to him now why because he wants something out of the teacher he wants wisdom he wants direction he wants maybe a higher status in society it's higher than a than a slave's fear of the master but still it's a kind of self-regarding affection And then there's the love between spouses.

7:22 They don't fear each other. They're not trying to get something out of each other. Rather, they're living utterly for each other. They're loving each other, listen now, for their own sakes. The husband says, I love you because of you. The wife that says to her husband, I love you because of you, for your sake, not for mine.

7:51 That's real love. Solem deligere deum, love God alone, propter ipsum solemn, for his own sake, for him alone. So apply this analogy, this distinction to God. so are there people that love God but in a sort of servile way yeah they're afraid of him they're they're ordered to him and they're they're willing to obey him but not because they love him but because they're afraid of hell they're afraid of how God might punish them they're afraid of What might happen if they don't obey?

8:36 Now, is that okay to some degree? Yeah, and you could say at the beginning of the spiritual journey, perhaps that's something you've got to pass through. Let's say somebody is living a life of terrible sin, and they're drawn out of it because of a fear of damnation. Okay, that's better than being sunk in a life of sin. But you see how it's a pretty low-level love. It's a servile relationship to God. Or are there people now who love God, but the way a student loves a master? That's to say, because they want something out of God. Maybe it's heaven, it's eternal life. It's some benefit. If I love God, then my life will be easier for me. I'm going to get some benefit from God.

9:29 I've spoken to you before about this, that the goal of the spiritual life is not to love the benefits of God, but to love the will of God, right? So we're a step above servile relationship. It's not just I'm afraid of going to hell, but I'm still not loving God for the sake of God alone. Then there's the highest love, which is like the love between two spouses. I love God not because I'm afraid of what might happen if I don't. I love God not because I'm trying to get something out of God.

10:10 I love God, proptor ipsum solum, for himself alone. I'm lost in the wonder and the beauty and the majesty of God. I'm not fearful. I'm not acquisitive. I'm not trying to get something out of it. I'm not trying to prevent something. I love God for God's sake alone.

10:36 That's what we're talking about. That's the highest kind of love. You know, you find a similar thing in the great Catherine of Siena. She talks about the kiss of the foot. so someone comes to Christ and they're just in abjection and penitence in their sin and they kiss the feet of Christ then there's the kiss of the hand well that's someone now that's moved beyond just that servile level but they want to be a disciple they want to follow the master and then finally she says there's the kiss of the mouth what's that but the kiss of intimacy with God. Loving God alone for the sake of God alone. You know, here's the way to put this thing. Remember the Lord says to his disciples the night before he dies, I no longer call you servants, but friends. I put to you, that's one of the most extraordinary statements in all of the religious literature of the world. Because to be a servant of God, Okay, every religion talks about that.

11:50 To be God's slave or to be God's disciple, right? Those are those first two levels. But when Jesus says, I no longer call you mere servants, but friends, it's not the kiss of the feet or the kiss of the hand or the kiss of the mouth. That's the kiss of real intimacy with the Lord. That's what God wants. You know, here's something. I'm going to throw it out here. It's extraordinary, and you find it in some of the saints in their kind of mystical reverie almost. Saints will say, Lord, if it's your will, if I can save somebody from hell, I'll go there in their place. Now, you can't really mean that in the full sense, because hell means abandonment by God, right? But you see how beautiful, weird, and strange that statement is.

12:45 hey Lord I love you so much I'm not afraid of you I'm not trying to get something out of you I just love your will so much that I'll go to hell to save somebody That person's in a qualitatively different place. The place of loving God, but with the whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind, that you're loving God for himself alone. what's the greatest commandment Lord sum up what the spiritual life's all about it's that not fear not acquisitiveness but falling in love with the will of God for its own sake