“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

15th Sunday of Matthew

By Fr Ted Toppses

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Love is an incredible thing.  When we experience love, we realize how profoundly wonderful life can be and how God’s Love for us changes everything.  We understand that God loves us more than we know how to love.  God loves us unconditionally. This love cannot be measured and we are truly blessed.  

We must strive to love like God does, unconditionally. 

We must by the Lord’s command ‘Love God and each other.’

Let us now review the first part of the Gospel lesson for today from St. Matthew

At that time, a lawyer asked him a question, to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

What is love? Let us consider Agape or pure love and it is most understood through 1^st Corinthians 13

 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.  For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

‘Agape’ in English is considered to be pure love.  There are three forms of ‘love’ in Greek and they are ‘Eros’ or impassioned love, ‘Philos’ or friendship, and ‘Agape’ or selfless pure love.

Christ’s words about the greatest commandment as recounted in today’s Gospel Lesson are "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment”

Christ describes the love needed to fulfill the greatest commandment as needing to be with all our heart, soul and mind. 

Our minds must be in a constant state of prayer, remembrance and watchfulness; putting our minds to worship God and refraining from sin.

Our soul is our being.  Our soul is what we are and not something that can be separated from us.  We are a soul living through a body, our body is also us. We are body and soul.

Our heart is the center of our being, the path to God in prayer, and the entrance to the kingdom of God within us. 

Loving God we need to approach Christ in a pure passionate, humble loving way. This is the first and greatest commandment and we must love our neighbor as ourselves.  This is not ‘wishy-washy’ love. This is not a mild feeling but a passionate and deep love we must have for God. 

Would we have a relationship with someone who did not want to be with us? 

Would we have a deep relationship with someone who wants to stay away from us? 

We must allow a love and passion for Christ to flood our hearts, souls and minds with the Divine light of Christ and with a sincere and powerful love that is passionate, humble and pure. Then we can truly begin to love God who already loves us, and share this love by loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Amen.