READING OF THE DAY
READING 1
DT 6:2-6
Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“Fear the LORD, your God,
and keep, throughout the days of your lives,
all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you,
and thus have long life.
Hear then, Israel, and be careful to observe them,
that you may grow and prosper the more,
in keeping with the promise of the LORD, the God of your fathers,
to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God,
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.”
READING 2
HEB 7:23-28
Brothers and sisters:
The levitical priests were many
because they were prevented by death from remaining in office,
but Jesus, because he remains forever,
has a priesthood that does not pass away.
Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him,
since he lives forever to make intercession for them.
It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
higher than the heavens.
He has no need, as did the high priests,
to offer sacrifice day after day,
first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
he did that once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
appoints a son,
who has been made perfect forever.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
MK 12:28B-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
‘He is One and there is no other than he.’
And ‘to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself’
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
Pope Francis asked the faithful to seek out “the idols hidden in the many recesses in our personality” and to “chase away the idol of worldliness that makes us enemies of God”, in his homily at Mass on Thursday morning, 6 June, in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae. Taking part, among others, were staff of the Vatican Apostolic Library and of the Pontifical Lateran University.
The exhortation to take “the road of love for God” and “set out for” his Kingdom was the culmination of a reflection on the Gospel of the day (Mk 12:28-34). The Pontiff first said that Jesus answered the scribe with God’s word, rather than an explanation: “the Lord our God, the Lord is one”. “Thus the profession of God must be made in life; it is not enough to say ‘I believe in one God’”. We must ask ourselves how to put this commandment into practice. In fact too often we continue “to live as though he were not the one God”, and as though “other divinities were available to us”. It was this that Pope Francis described as “the danger of idolatry… brought to us with the spirit of the world”. And, he said, Jesus is always quite clear about this.
Pope Francis considers it is the spirit of the world that cunningly entices us to idolatry. “I am sure”, he said, that “none of us stands before a tree to worship it as an idol”, that “none of us keeps statues to adore at home”. But “idolatry is subtle; we have our hidden idols and the road through life to arrive at the kingdom of God, to be near it, entails unearthing hidden idols”. How can we unmask these idols? The Pope said they are those that make us do the opposite of what the commandment says. “The road of love for God… is a road of love, a road of faithfulness”.
(Santa Marta, 6 June 2013)