“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other…..”

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities. - Ezra Taft Benson: (1899 – 1994: was an American farmer, government official, and religious leader who served as the 15th United States Secretary of Agriculture)

Gospel Text: (MT 22:34-40)

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."

It is very easy in life to get the two great commandments reversed, and put ourselves and other people first in our life, and give God what’s left over.  Most good Catholics and Christian people in general, work hard at loving other people though, just as much as we love ourselves.  We understand the second commandment pretty well, and work to apply it in our lives.

However, it isn’t easy to love God.  You can’t hug Him.  You can’t detect Him with your five senses.  He is invisible, because He is a Spirit and not made of temporal matter, but He exists none the less.  The only way to truly get to know God, and to love Him like the gospel says, “with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind,” is through a regular prayer life.  The sacraments of the church help to predispose us to His grace, but that alone is not enough.  He wants our time and attention, in regular conversations with Him through prayer.  He has our complete undivided attention then.  It is also good to spend some time listening for God in the quiet, after we have said our prayers.

Silence, solitude, nature, and time spent in prayer are excellent means of becoming more aware of God’s presence in your life.  Surely we can carve out at least a half hour a day, (or more), to spend some time to get to know our creator better?  When we reach for God, He always reaches back for us.

Your life will begin to change in ways you can not even begin to imagine, if you do this.  It’s like scales that fall off the eyes of your heart, and you will begin to see the world around you in a completely different way.  His love will surround you, and permeate everything, strengthening you and supporting you, so that life is so much easier to handle, and gentler on your soul and in your heart, than what you may have ever experienced before.