Daily Gospel Reflection
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August 23, 2024
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.”
Reflection
Back in the summer of 1989, I experienced the blessing of being part of a Christian baseball team from the United States that traveled throughout Central America, sharing goodwill and our personal testimonies of faith. Our journey included meeting many people who had very little but still showed much love and joy.
We took a private bus to get from one game to the next. One day, while in the mountains of Honduras, we got a flat tire. With only a little time to make it to the next game, our coaches decided the team would catch an old public bus passing by. Although I could not speak much of their language, I could smile at some of the other passengers. A mother and her daughter were eating what I would soon learn were mangos and offered me one. They could tell I had never eaten one and knew what would happen next—mango juice went everywhere as I took a bite! The whole bus broke out with smiles and laughter at this silly American.
St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, “Each person has been created to love and to be loved.” Pope Francis adds, “This is God’s dream for mankind. And to accomplish it, we need his grace: we need to receive within us the capacity to love that comes from God himself. Jesus offers himself to us in the Eucharist for this very reason. May the Blessed Virgin help us welcome into our lives the great commandment of love of God and neighbor.”
Today at Notre Dame, we officially welcome the new students ahead of classes next week. It’s such a memorable weekend on campus as we see the line of cars from everywhere heading down Notre Dame Avenue for student move-in. We are a community filled with hopes and dreams to help make the world a better place. It can all begin with how we love and sometimes maybe even a smile and a mango.
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.
(Scientists recently performed an analysis of her skull, which has been kept by Dominicans in Peru, and created a digital reconstruction of her face. To see what she might have looked like in person, click here.)
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.