Fr. Raymond Homily Sun 27th.B 2015

        

Homlly; Fr. Raymond

Sunday, 04 October 2015

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to bless them and embrace them. 

This seemed to be just a bit of a nuisance as far as his disciples were concerned; to them it was just a waste of time;  something that interrupted his much more important work of preaching; something that interrupted his wonderful ministry of healing. But Jesus obviously felt very differently about it. He even felt quite indignant about it. This must be the only time in the Gospels that we learn that Jesus felt indignant about anything. I suppose he must have felt a sense of indignity when he saw the buying and selling that was going on in the temple. But that was a sense of indignity on account of the sacredness of the temple, God's House. But in today's gospel he is obviously feeling a sense of personal indignitY.lt1~as a personal affront that really hurt him. It is so obvious that he felts not fully understood even by his closest disciples and that must have been hurtful.

This is an awesome thought: that Jesus was so indignant that his own disciples should feel that he was demeaning himself by associating with children in such a way. He must have felt how little they yet understood him. How much he still had to teach them!

This tells us so much about the character of Jesus. It tells us so much about him both as God and as man. The proud find it hard to associate with children. They are out of their depth with children. But Jesus was perfectly at ease with them and they with him.

'Learn of me', Jesus said 'Because I am meek and humble of heart'.

The next very telling phrase in this gospel is: 'Anyone who does not welcome the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it'.

In these words Jesus isn't teaching us to be childish in the sense of that immaturity, that self-centredness that is so typical of young children. He is drawing our attention to other qualities that children have. For instance, a child has no worries for tomorrow, it trusts absolutely in its parents to provide for its needs. This is an attitude we should all have to our heavenly Father. A child knows that it is loved and it subconsciously feels secure in that love. We too should feel secure in the certainty that God loves us too. A child rushes to its parents for comfort when it is hurt. We too must learn to turn spontaneously to oow en we are hurting. And-how many are the hurts that life brings us! A child is terrified of the barking dog, but once its Father picks it up it feels secure. How many are the dangers and fears we face in life that are too big and scary for us to cope with on our own. We stand so much in need of a Father to run to at times.

God is good and loving, but the lessons he has to teach us can be hard at times and the greatest lesson we learn from the hardest of these times is how to be as little children and turn to our heavenly Father in all our needs.

COMMUNITY  SUNDAY MASS  

St. Teresa of Avila

   

MEDITATION from MAGNIFICAT com

Coming to Jesus Like Children

O Son of God and my Lord! How is it that you give so much all together in the first words? Since you humble yourself to such an extreme in joining with us in prayer and making yourself the Brother of creatures so lowly and wretched, how is it that you give us in the name of your Father everything that can be given? For you desire that he consider us his children, because your Word cannot fail. You oblige him to be true to your Word, which is no small burden since in being Father he must bear with us no matter how serious the offences.

If we return to him like the prodigal son, he has to pardon us. He has to console us in our trials. He has to sustain us in the way a father like this must. For, in effect, he must be better than all the fathers in the world because in him everything must be faultless. And after all this he must make us sharers and heirs with you.

SAINT TERESA OF AVILA Saint Teresa of Avila (t 1582), Doctor of the Church, reformed the Carmelite Order.

Front cover; Saint Teresa of Avila

Divinely human!

In Seville, in 1576, Brother Juan de la Miseria, o.c.d., was the first to paint a portrait of Teresa. Referring to the beauty of the saint, María de San José ends her comments with the affirmation that “she was perfect in all things, as we can see from [this] portrait”. Teresa herself had some reservations about the likeness of the painting: “May God forgive you, Brother Juan, for having painted me ugly and bleary-eyed.” Whatever the case, his portrait was to serve as the model for all future versions.

In this month’s cover portrait by José Ribera, the artist gives free rein to his tenebrist style of naturalism. A Caravaggio-inspired distribution of light and shade can be seen in the Carmelite habit as well as in the rendering of the cape, worn for liturgical prayers. The depiction of Teresa in the act of writing is a recurrent theme in Teresian iconography. For, indeed, in obedience to her confessors, Teresa undertook the writing of her autobiography, followed by numerous texts on the life of prayer.

Light descends from above to illumine the beautiful face of the saint. Her gaze, peering at the origin of this supernatural light, attests that her whole being is turned toward God. The dove symbolises the Holy Spirit, the source of her divinely-inspired writings. “Most of the things I write do not come from my own head, but from the heavenly Master who inspires them within me,” wrote Teresa. Her writings, which earned her the honour of becoming the first woman Doctor of the Church, are an inexhaustible resource for the devout soul.

Note the skull in the foreground, a “vanity” that the saints of the Catholic Reformation kept always in view to aid meditation on the fragility of earthly existence and the grandeur of death—a death to be wished for as the ultimate baptism opening the way toward true Life: “I die because I do not die!” exclaimed Teresa. How far we are here from the attitude of our contemporaries to the prospect of death!

Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), José de Ribera, called Lo Spagnoletto (1591–1652), Museum of Fine Arts San Pio V, Valencia, Spain.   

Sunday July 2015 Homily by Fr. Raymond

Jesus, Hometown rejected, Mark 6:1

 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mass Homily by Fr. Raymond 

“A Prophet has no honour among his own.”  (Mark 6: 1-6a)

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Fr. Raymond

To: Donald ...

Sent: Monday, 6 July 2015, 9:54
Subject: Prophets

14^th  Sunday  Ord.

When Jesus was wandering round the towns and villages preaching, one wonders whether he always had something different to say in his discourses, or whether, in fact, he often repeated himself.  Certainly he did repeat his teaching about the Eucharist at least once.   There was the symbolic feeding of the four thousand with seven loaves and the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves. And then, especially, there was the explicit teaching at the Last Supper about the bread of life. That certainly underlines for us the importance of his teaching about the eucharist,  but what about other things he taught?  Did he develop a stock list of important parables and go on repeating them wherever he went? His time among us was to be very  short and he had a great many things to teach us.  

He even once said to his apostles, when he was leaving this world for good, that he still had many things to say to them, but they weren’t able to grasp them yet until he would send his Holy Spirit to teach them.

However, there is one lesson he taught that was so tied to the time and place where it was taught that it could hardly have been taught in any other context.  This is the scene that’s put before us in today’s Gospel.  The setting is Jesus very own town of Nazareth where he had lived with Mary his Mother and Joseph; where he had settled after his return from Egypt; where he had grown up and where all his relatives and friends were; where he had worked among them as a carpenter.  These people knew him just as one of themselves.  

They knew he hadn’t had any special education or training as a Rabbi.  Yet here he was, just a young upstart, posing to be better than them and claiming to be able to teach even his elders.  Certainly there were these amazing gifts of healing he had, but that should go hand in hand with a due understanding of his humble place among them.

These were the sentiments that drew from Jesus that phrase that has become so proverbial in our culture: “A Prophet has no honour among his own.”  (Mark 6: 1-6a)

There is a lesson in this teaching that should play a large part in our every-day lives.  We must have the ability to appreciate the gifts and talents and qualities of those whom we associate with most closely every day.  

Above all this is true of the other members of our own family and household.  We can often take them so much for granted. 

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TRINITY 2015 From: Fr. Raymond Homily

       

 “A white counter on which is written a name known only to ourselves and to our Creator”.  That is how the book of the Apocalypse so poetically describes it.  This priceless gift of personhood enables us to relate to others and to share in their lives just as the three Divine Persons share in the one Divine Life of the Trinity.

 Fw: TRINITY

Holy Trinity, Mass Homily, 

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----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Fr. Raymond ....
To:     
Sent: Monday, 1 June 2015, 7:07
Subject: TRINITY

TRINITY 2015 From: Fr. Raymond Homily

Mankind has acknowledged its God, its Creator, from the dawn of time.  there is plenty of evidence for this through all the ages.  Even in the most apparently God-forsaken places, in the most primitive of societies, men have worship a god of one kind or another.  St Paul, in his speech in the Areopagus attributes this to the loving providence of God.  And St Augustine says that God did not abandon his children altogether when they first sinned against him.  The story of the fall in the Garden of Eden is only the beginning of a great love story because God was going to lead his children back gradually and patiently to reconciliation and to full knowledge and communion with himself.  God’s call of ‘Adam!  Where are you?’ when he hid himself in shame after his fall wasn’t the call of an angry, offended Deity.  No!  It was the cry of a Father who has lost his Son!  “Adam!  Where are you?” And mankind on its part, for all its waywardness, still hankered after its Maker.  It needed him!

It is only in relatively recent times that man has grown so self assured that he sees no need for a God of any kind.  He now imagines himself to be so much in control of his “Tower-of-Babel”, this “Tower-of-Babel”of a society that we have built for our-selves, that we have no longer have any need for him!  There seems to be nothing that we can’t accomplish for ourselves now.  We can reach out to the stars; we can split the atom; we can manipulate nature; we can even engineer human life itself now!  No wonder we read in Genesis that God repented of making man.  When they built their tower of Babel God said “This is only the beginning!  When they set their minds to it now there is nothing they won’t be able to accomplish!

But, although God repented of having made man, and although he could look down the centuries and see the terrible accumulation of evil that man would pile up, yet he still didn’t abandon him.  Indeed we might take the words out of the mouth of Job and put them into the mouth of God: “Even though they slay me yet will I love them!” And how prophetic those words are:  “Even though they slay me yet will I love them!” because that is precisely what came to pass.  We put our very God, our creator, to death.  We nailed him to a cross.  

In spite of all this our God continued, not only to seek after us, but also gradually to reveal himself more and more clearly to us.  We tended to think of him in human terms.  We made our God in our own image and likeness, as it were.  We thought of him in many different forms.  The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Lands of the East, all had their different ideas of him.  Polytheism flourished everywhere.  But God carefully nourished and shepherded one unique people, the nation of the Hebrews, the descendents of Abraham, to guard jealousy the true idea of one, only, all powerful and eternal God. And eventually, into that nation he himself descended from heaven in the person of Jesus to finally reveal the great secret of the  Godhead, namely that although he is one, and only one in his divine being, yet he is three in person.

And this Trinitarian nature of our Creator is manifest throughout his handiwork of creation:  1. All things exist in one or other of three forms, be it liquid, solid, or vapour.  2. All things exist in three dimensions: length, breadth and height.  3. All time is enclosed in past, present and future.  4. The human race exists and survives as man woman and child.

But surely the most sublime gift of our wonderful human nature and the one that most intimately likens us to the Trinity is the sublime gift God has given each of us of our own individual personhood.      “A white counter on which is written a name known only to ourselves and to our Creator”.  That is how the book of the Apocalypse so poetically describes it.  This priceless gift of personhood enables us to relate to others and to share in their lives just as the three Divine Persons share in the one Divine Life of the Trinity.

Fr. Raymond Sunday 10th, Homily

Reception 3 p.m.
Raymond at crossword

Gospel   John 15:9-17

 

Sun 6 Easter 2015
Fr. Raymond Homily

Jesus said to his disciples: "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." Then he launches into an all embracing description of love. His description covers not only love as found among men, love as the world knows it, but also that love which is the source and the origin of all love: the love that is the inner life of the blessed Trinity itself; This is as much as to say that "The Love that binds the Blessed Trinity itself together is the blueprint for all created love, whether it is found among men or even among angels. There is no other source or fountain of true love. There is no other way we can genuinely love other than as the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father.
We are made in God’s image and likeness.

The next point Jesus makes is to say that love and joy go together, where one

is loved and knows oneself to be loved, then although the whole world may collapse around us, we will still be at peace deep within ourselves, because the very groundwork of our existence, the sense of our self worth is assured for us. "My joy will be in you" He says.

But then comes another aspect of the picture of love: Jesus teaches us the essential altruism of love. "A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends" he says. Love gives and doesn't count the cost, and who was to be a greater example of this than himself on Calvary? "And it is you who are my friends" He says. I will not call you servants any more. You are my friends.

Jesus then defines this friendship in terms of the intimate knowledge and sharing that true friends have with each other. And again he compares this knowledge with the mutual knowledge that exists between himself and his heavenly Father. "I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father" he says. The mind boggles and the heart misses a beat at the import of these words: "I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father". They underline and confirm for us those other 'unbelievable' words of St John: "We will be like Him for we shall see Him as he is."

Fr. Raymond Homily St. John 12;20-33

Sunday 22nd (2015) Mass

Homily of Fr. Raymond

Some Greeks Wish to See Jesus

²⁰ Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹ They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³ Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵ Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

Jesus Speaks about His Death

²⁷ “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰ Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. ³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³² And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

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St. John tells us in today's Gospel that some Greeks approached Philip to ask him to introduce them to Jesus. Why was it Philip they approached? Somehow, perhaps because of his accent, they knew he was from the area called Galilee, Galilee of the Gentiles in fact it was called. It seems there were so many gentiles living where he did that they thought they would have a more sympathetic hearing from him than from any of the other apostles. The others were so obviously 'dyed in the wool' Jews, bitterly antagonistic to all that the gentiles stood for. So, it's not surprising that it was Philip they asked to introduce them to Jesus. However, It's obvious that this request was a bit too much for Philip to handle on his own. So he went to ask Andrew for moral support. Andrew was a bit higher up in the pecking order of the Apostles; after all he was Peter's Brother.     

The reason for this round about approach to Jesus was that up till then Jesus himself had steered very much clear of the gentiles. In fact, when he first sent his apostles out to prepare the way for him to come in person, he explicitly told them: "Don't go to gentile towns or to gentile villages. He was very firm about this policy himself. He even went to the extent of appearing to be cruel about it! When a poor gentile Mother pleaded with him to deliver her daughter from a devil, he refused at first, because, as he said "1 was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel". You need only read the Gospels to realise how faithfully he kept to this purpose. Jesus could so easily have imitated his great missionary disciple Paul. He could so easily, like Paul, have travelled far and wide throughout the Roman Empire to spread the Good News. But no, Jesus kept jealously to the mission his Father gave him: to "go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel". 

It's no wonder then that St Johnmakes a great deal of this scene. This had been, for himself and for the other apostles, a moment of the greatest significance in the mission of the Master. This was a defining moment in the mission of the Messiah, the Messiah whom they had jealous!y regarded as the Saviour, not of the world, but of the house of Israel only. And it's no wonder that Jesus himself gets caught up in the greatness of the moment - "Now, now the hour has come", he says "Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Now the hour has come for the accomplishment of the redemption of all peoples, Jews and Gentiles alike to the ends of the earth. Now My Hour has come. Now the full scope of my mission begins"

Fr. Raymond Homily Mass Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Gospel Mark 1:21-28

Capernaum Synogogue

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel Mark 1:21-28. Homily: Fr. Raymond

Homilies in Docs: “He taught them with authority” Raymond

 “He taught them with authority”

We read today that the teaching of Jesus made a deep impression on the people, why did it do this? because, unlike the Scribes, He taught them with authority.  This is really a very strange thing when we consider who the Scribes were.   The Scribes were, in fact, the officially recognised authority in teaching the interpre-tation of the Law for the Jewish people.   Obviously however, the people who were listening to Jesus had instinctively recognised that the teaching that came from Him came with a force, with a personal authority, that they had never experienced in the teaching of the Scribes.  The Scribes were the official interpreters of the law, but there was something much more powerful in the words that came from Jesus; there was something much more commanding, something much more of authority in the words that came from him than the words that came from them.

The whole manner of Jesus teaching, if the people could only grasp it, was, in fact, just like his miracles, one of the manifestations of the Authority that came from his Divine Nature.  The people couldn’t understand this but they could obviously feel it, and they were overawed by it.  Jesus wasn’t, just like the scribes, preaching what they had read in the book of the law, no matter how sacred that book was.  Jesus was expounding that law and that truth which was in fact his very own self.  He was the Law.  He was the Truth, in himself.  He was speaking his own mind and heart and will.  Jesus didn’t just say: “What I teach is the way”, “What I teach is the truth”.  He said “I am the way.”  “I am the truth”.    Even the guards sent by the high priest to arrest him returned empty handed and overawed; “No man has ever spoken like this” they said.

Even for the rest of us ordinary mortals, the way we say a thing can be a more important conveyor of our meaning than what it is we say.  How much more true that must have been when Jesus spoke. The voice of Jesus conveyed not only the truth behind it but also the authority and the warnings behind it.  The voice of Jesus must also have conveyed the love and the compassion behind it.   If we would hear that voice in all its moods we need only read the Gospels with faith.

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Intercessions (Fr. Hugh):

1)     For Pope Francis for his difficult task of leading the Church, and communicating the joy of the gospel.

2)     The joy of the gospel.
Our Lord’s contemporaries were deeply impressed by his teachings.

3)    May we discover in the gospel this continuing presence.

4)     For SCIAF – the Scottish organisation for God’s blessing on its work and in thanks for all the help it has it has given.

5)     For the sick and especially those suffering from mental ill-health.

6)     Tomorrow’s celebration for the year’s celebration for the consecrated life in Edinburgh and for more vocations.

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January 20th. BLESSED CYFRIAN TANSI

 Cistercian Monk    

        

Mass Homily below.

The Mass Introduction was moving quoting from Dom John Moakler:

Of Bl. Cyprian, "His holiness was a hidden holiness... Humility is central to St . Benedict's Rule, and that means, in St. Bernard’s words, that the monk is one who loves to be unknown, Ama Nesciri".

January 20th.

BLESSED CYFRIAN TANSI

(from a homily given by Abbot John Moakler at Mt. St. Bernards on the occasion of his beatification 1998)

It must be quite unique for a mass to be offered in honour of a beatified member of a community by those who actually knew him. Of course there have been occasions in this century when relatives and acquaintances of a person have been present at his or her beatification or canonisation, but I cannot recall any case of a priest offering mass in honour of someone who not so long ago had stood next to him in choir.

The person next to one may always be a .saint. But don’t expect halos to be visible. When Sister Therese of the Child Jesus died, in 1897, one of her community wondered just what could be said about her in the death notice that was sent round to other Carmels, this has usually been taken as a lack of perception on the part of that particular sister, but I think Therese herself would have understood. She" certainly did not want to be thought of as a saint during her life on earth. And I think all of us who knew Father Cyprian would have to admit that when he died we did not think we had lost a saint. His companion Father Mark Ulugu, was the one we would all have spontaneously canonised.

The fact is that we did not really know much about him, beyond the fact that he had come from Nigeria with the intention of taking monastic and contemplative life back to his own country. His reputation as a parish priest and as an apostle was not known to us in any detail. He came among us as one breaking new ground, for what European community at that time, 1950, had any black members?

And it was for him an adventure into the unknown – he had come to a country whose people he had only met as colonisers and exploiters; he had been treated by both missionaries and government officials as a second class person; he had not experienced the damp and cold of our northern climate; he had never seen ice and snow at close quarters before; and this was not enough, he was not just coming to England he was coming to a Cistercian monastery in England, which even most English people themselves would have found difficult to survive in, so the challenges to perseverance were considerable. In addition the novitiate regime at the time was very strict

Some of the present community worked with Cyprian. They have their own memories a and stories. He was uncompromising in his living of the life, yet there was always a gentleness and a. humour there, and he did not give the appearance of a hard ascetic. The strict rule of silence at the time meant that many of us were never able to converse with him, and although he was next to me in choir for some time, and acted as a deacon at the first Mass in 1956, I could not say that I really knew him. But one thing is certain – he did not appear extraordinary in any way. His holiness was a hidden holiness. It was the holiness of an ordinary person who lives his faith and his union with God at a level not apparent to others. Those who had known him in Nigeria and had seen his apostolic zeal and dedication as a parish priest were no doubt more aware of what was in the man than we were. Members of a monastic community are not heroes to each other, and they are often more conscious of each other's failings than of their virtues.

Humility is central to St . Benedict's Rule, and that means, in St. Bernard’s words, that the monk is one who loves to be unknown, Ama Nesciri.

Cyprian lived that and only after 34 years after his death is he becoming known – even to those with whom he lived.

2/4 January 2015, the Epiphany. Fr. Raymond Homily

Mass Homily, by Fr. Raymond  

Our Crib: Nativity figures play their parts.
The Epiphany Star features Scripture and Liturgy

Subject: Epiphany

The Liturgy speaks of three Epiphanies. 

The Adoration of the Magi, when the Gentile Nations recognised the Messiah; 

the first public miracle at the Marriage Feast of Cana,  when the water blushed into wine, as the antiphon so picturesquely says;   

and lastly the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, when the Father's voice proclaimed "This is my beloved Son!

However if we wish to confine the Mystery of the Epiphany to God’s opening up of the gospel to all nations, then we must focus on the first of these three scenes, The Coming of the Magi seeking Him who was born King of the Jews. The Old Testament foreshadowings of this mystery stretch from the enigmatic figure of Melchidezech to the even more enigmatic figure of Balaam and his wonderful blessings and prophecies and through all the gentile figures in the lineage of the Christ Himself. These stretch from the Canaanite wife of Judah to the Moabite woman Ruth and goodness knows how many others. 

It is to the Prophets we must turn however to find the most explicit teaching of the gathering of the Gentiles into the Family of God. Today’s Liturgy is full of it. "Arise and shine Jerusalem ... The Nations shall come to your light, kings to your dawning brightness. Lift up your eyes and look around. All are assembling and coming towards you.”  This aspect of the Christian Mystery is of course a perennial one. The Church IS Epiphany. WE are Epiphany. It is another way of saying that the Church is missionary. WE are missionary.

But Today’s Feast says something more. Let us be careful to note that it was not the Holy Family that went out on a 'mission' seeking the Wise Men. No, it was the Wise Men who came seeking the Child who was born to be King.

In this wonderful event we are invited by the Holy Spirit to realize and to appreciate the searching and seeking that goes on the minds and hearts of all men of good will, whatever their religion. And even more are we invited by today’s mysterious events to ponder how God Himself is with these Gentiles of all time; his loving providence guiding them and providing signs and clues to lead them to the truth. 

          Raymond      

Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan

       

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A 26 Oct 2014

News: put one hour back

1. Everything you need to know about the clocks going back

   
   

   Daylight saving time (DST) is the biannual event when we forget whether to put our clocks one hour back or one hour forward, and whether this ...

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A 26 Oct 2014
Mass Homily by Fr. Raymond

 

October, falling leaves  

Saint Matthew 22:34-40. 

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees  ...

The Gospel scene opens with a collusion between the Scribes and the Pharisees to get the better of Jesus.  As far as they were concerned he was just a young upstart of a wandering preacher who was stealing the respect of the crowds away from themselves who were, in their own eyes, the true guardians of  Israel’s law.  Normally these two groups hated each other and would have nothing to do with each other.  They both had different theological viewpoints, especially about the resurrection of the body.  The wily St Paul used this difference to his own advantage when they both accused him at his trial before the Romans of being a trouble maker.

However, Jesus it seems,  doesn’t take this matter any further because the question they asked of him was such an important one and he didn’t want to confuse the issue of a basic answer to a basic question, even though the question wasn’t asked in good faith.  They were only trying to set a trap for him. They knew very well what was the greatest commandment: the commandment that came from the Book of Deuteronomy: “ Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy strength”.

This basic commandment, even though it is pre-christian, seems at first sight to be impossible of fulfilment even in the Christian era!  Who could ever aspire to love the lord God with all his heart and all his soul and all his strength?  Jesus immaculate Mother herself would seem to be the only one who could aspire to such heights.  But God doesn’t ask the impossible of us.  At the same time as giving us this commandment he gives us an inner power, not only to fulfil it but even to surpass it.  He gives us the gift of his divine spirit poured into our hearts so that we now have his own divine power within us with which to love.  By the gift of this Spirit we are caught up into the very ambit of the Divine life of Love itself.