You will love the Lord your God, with all your heart and soul, will all your mind and with all your will.
The title was the answer Jesus gave to the rich young man when he asked what was the greatest Commandment. He went on to say "And the second is like unto this, you will love your neighbour......"
How many actually grasp that the second actually comes after the first. That the first thing in any Christian life is to love God. Many priests and bishops are very good at telling the people that God loves them and then going on to deny the existence of sin and hell, and anything that is disagreeable and would make them not very popular. It is an easy role. We can say many lovely things about God in our lives and arouse the feel good factor and teach people to be very smug in the knowledge that God loves them and that is the only thing that is important. What is not so good is that we almost have a duty because of His love to love Him in return.
But how can we show that we love God. Now that is very difficult today since Catholics take their values in England more from the norms of Society than from the Church. Jesus did not say "If you love me keep THEIR Commandments but rather keep My Commandments. So what is so different about the Commandments of Christ and the values of Society. The great change today from 50 years ago is that we now have 'people of learning' informing the Church on what she should be teaching. It is called 'updating the teachings of Christ to the needs of our Society" which is a euphemism for just ignore the Jesus of the Gospels and listen to us. At first this was disguised as 'following your conscience' but this was trimmed down to the Church being 'just wrong'. And what the Hell does it matter for God loves us, so let us 'move on'. This idea that we can ignore Christ and still keep the love of God would have been called the sin of presumption in the old days but today it has the backing of 'scholars' so we must bend. At the best places where the 'God loves us' mentality prevails you will find people supporting homosexuality, abortion, sex outside of marriage, divorce and remarriage, and indeed all the values of our secular society. Bishops and priests are their best followers which is why you seldom hear a priest denouncing the murder of babies in the womb, talking about Church teaching on homosexuality, encouraging young people to be chaste, their excuse is like society we must be 'inclusive'. They are only there to be popular with the 'educated' laity and certainly pro-life catholics are used not as part of a Parish agenda but to show tolerance in an 'open and inclusive' Church. And where is Jesus in all this - nowhere. And where is God in all this - nowhere. We take our values from society because we do not love God with all our heart and all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength.
How many actually grasp that the second actually comes after the first. That the first thing in any Christian life is to love God. Many priests and bishops are very good at telling the people that God loves them and then going on to deny the existence of sin and hell, and anything that is disagreeable and would make them not very popular. It is an easy role. We can say many lovely things about God in our lives and arouse the feel good factor and teach people to be very smug in the knowledge that God loves them and that is the only thing that is important. What is not so good is that we almost have a duty because of His love to love Him in return.
But how can we show that we love God. Now that is very difficult today since Catholics take their values in England more from the norms of Society than from the Church. Jesus did not say "If you love me keep THEIR Commandments but rather keep My Commandments. So what is so different about the Commandments of Christ and the values of Society. The great change today from 50 years ago is that we now have 'people of learning' informing the Church on what she should be teaching. It is called 'updating the teachings of Christ to the needs of our Society" which is a euphemism for just ignore the Jesus of the Gospels and listen to us. At first this was disguised as 'following your conscience' but this was trimmed down to the Church being 'just wrong'. And what the Hell does it matter for God loves us, so let us 'move on'. This idea that we can ignore Christ and still keep the love of God would have been called the sin of presumption in the old days but today it has the backing of 'scholars' so we must bend. At the best places where the 'God loves us' mentality prevails you will find people supporting homosexuality, abortion, sex outside of marriage, divorce and remarriage, and indeed all the values of our secular society. Bishops and priests are their best followers which is why you seldom hear a priest denouncing the murder of babies in the womb, talking about Church teaching on homosexuality, encouraging young people to be chaste, their excuse is like society we must be 'inclusive'. They are only there to be popular with the 'educated' laity and certainly pro-life catholics are used not as part of a Parish agenda but to show tolerance in an 'open and inclusive' Church. And where is Jesus in all this - nowhere. And where is God in all this - nowhere. We take our values from society because we do not love God with all our heart and all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength.
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