Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
August 23, 2019
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law, tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Whenever the Pharisees make an appearance, it is a sure sign that some necessary self-reflection is coming. As Jesus holds the mirror to their faces to reveal their desire to trap him in contradiction, I can’t help but feel that that mirror is also present to help me examine how I can do better.
When teaching religious education several years ago in my local parish, I was guiding a group of 6th graders through the Old Testament. In their travels across the desert, the Hebrew people had once again turned away from God in the hope of finding an easier way than the path God had set for them. I was making the point to them that, every time they questioned or sought something better, God welcomed the people back without hesitation. All of a sudden, I became so overwhelmed with emotion that I feared I would soon be ugly crying in front of this group of 13-year-olds. It was as if, for the first time in over forty years of life on earth, I completely understood the depth of God’s love and forgiveness. It rendered me speechless. All of those times I had chosen other things over loving God were coming back to me and I understood for the first time how often I had been welcomed back.
With constant distractions around us, it is often difficult to hear God’s messages and choose love for God over worldly things, and even harder to choose to show love for the most challenging of our neighbors. Remembering God’s love empowers us to try to live according to what Jesus outlines so simply for the Pharisees, but understanding God’s ability to welcome us back when we falter is essential to our aspirations to live according to these commands.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, you sent your Son into the world, not to upend the law, but to fulfill it. We rejoice in the knowledge that above all else you have commanded us to love. Thank you, Lord, for the kindness and wisdom of this law. May we spend our lives focused on these two great commandments. Come Holy Spirit, help us to love.
Saint of the Day
St. Rose of Lima was given the name Isabel when she was born in Peru in 1586. She was such a beautiful baby, however, that people could not help calling her Rose.
Her beauty grew as she aged, and she became the subject of much admiration. She decided to devote herself fully to Jesus, however, and the admiration became a distraction to her. She feared her beauty would distract others as well, so she would rub crushed pepper on her face to produce rashes and blisters.
Her devotion led her to take on severe mortifications, but she was devoted to those around her with similar intensity. When her parents fell into poverty, she worked to grow food in their garden and took on sewing jobs at night. She dedicated a room in her family’s home to care for orphans and the poor.
She wanted to enter a convent, but her parents would not give her permission because they wanted her to marry. She was obedient to her parents and did not join a convent. She did convince them of her vow of virginity, however—she clung to her single-hearted devotion to Christ and remained at home for her whole life, giving herself to prayer and good works. (She became a third-order Dominican, meaning that she took on the spirituality of the Dominicans as a private lay person.)
She is the patron of the Americas, the Philippines, and of florists. She is depicted, among other places, in a mural and in a window in the Basilica, wearing a crown of roses, and a number of her relics are kept in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.
St. Rose of Lima, your beauty transcended your body as you stubbornly sought holiness—pray for us!
To learn even more about Saint Rose of Lima, watch this video lecture from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.