Welcome to our day of the reflection for this Friday, March 13th. And of course, every
Friday, we remember good Friday and we fast. We make a sacrifice, especially during
Lent. And our Lent and Journey, we abstain from meat. Make that sacrifice. And remember
that Christ, Yoke, is easy and is burdened light when we are motivated by love. So offer
it up for somebody that you love. And that will make the sacrifice much easier. Now today
we have a great invitation from God. He calls us to return to Him. And so the Prophet
Hosea, we get this idea of return, return, echoed over and over again. And that word
return in Hebrew, shoe, means to turn. And it's to turn away from what I want to what
God wants. I'm turning from my pursuits to God. And so I love that concrete metaphor
that the Hebrews use for repentance. It's not an abstract idea. It's a very concrete
idea of turning and putting one's attention on the right things on God. And then God
gives a promise that he will give healing and love if we turn towards Him. And so that's
a beautiful image. And then the Saul today, Psalm 81, echoes this invitation to return
and turn to the Lord. And it tells us the means by which we do that. The key thing is to
hear, to listen, shema, to listen or hear as it, that Hebrew word shema means, to listen
to God is the means by which we turn towards Him. That will be important. And then Jesus
in the gospel today gives us the heart of his word and of his teaching and the way and
the heart of everything in terms of following God. And what we have to listen to most of
all, and he is asked by a scribe, what is the greatest of all the commandments? So there's
the whole Old Testament. You've got so many books of the Bible. And here to the scribe
is giving a really hard question to Jesus, like what's the most important? And of course
Jesus, who is God, who is the author of all that word, is going to give us a great insight
into that. And he says, you know, which is first of all the commandments. And he says, the first
is this. And now he quotes the shema, the call to listen to hear God. And he says, quoting
the shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone. And you shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your
strength. Now notice one key little word that he uses repeatedly. All, A-L-L, all. We
are to love God with all of our soul, all of our strength, all of our mind, all of our
heart, not just with a part, not just partially, but all. And here Jesus highlights something
that goes back all the way to the Torah to the great Jewish prayer, the shema that we
find in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, and following. And that is this great, some is
this great call by God to Israel. He invites us to total love. And that's why we'll find
in the Psalms, David speaking in Psalm 119 and Psalm 27, and so many other Psalms he talks
about loving God with all his heart. And in doing that, David is echoing his own reflection
and meditation on this great prayer, this greatest of all Jewish prayers, the shema,
which summons us to love God wholeheartedly with all our heart. So today let's reflect
on that word all. Am I loving God with all my strength? Am I loving God with all my mind,
using my mind to study and learn? Am I loving God with all my heart, with all my love, right?
That is the question during this Lenten journey. So let's take that to prayer today. May the
Lord bless and keep you. Did you know that the primary title for Jesus in the Gospels is
Teacher Rabbi, right? He's constantly called Teacher over and over and over again by his disciples,
even by his enemies. He's respectfully called Teacher Jesus came to teach us about the truth,
about his father, the truth about ourselves, the truth of salvation. And that is why at the
Augustine Institute, the heart of remission is to help Catholics understand, live and share
their faith. And with our short courses, we are taking the treasures of our graduate school
and of our faculty and professors and making them available to everyone else. Through our short
courses, you get a graduate level course in short without the difficult exams, without the difficult
papers that you have to write. You get this wisdom of Christ boiled down for you in a short
appetizer, so to speak. And so we want you to get these short courses that you can grow closer
to Christ because God calls us to love God not only with all of our heart, not only with all of
our soul and all of our strength, but with all of our mind. We want you to know the mind of Christ.
And so we provide these great short courses with renowned faculty at the Augustine Institute.
These are wonderful short courses and you can find out more at Augustine.edu slash course.
Augustine.edu slash course. Learn about our short courses and you'll find out why many people
who find them find them incredibly appealing and they love them. And so I think you will too.
May the Lord bless and keep you.
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