When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as our self…There it is…You got the “secret”

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the Gospel of St Mark a scribe asks Jesus a question…."Which is the first of all the commandments?" ….Jesus being the straight forward man that he is boils the entire law down to two sentences….”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these”….BOOM - There it is!……But here is the question?…How can we do this being that we are just mere humans all born with a fallen nature?…The answer is we can not do this to the degree that Jesus asks of us without divine assistance…I can hear all the “go-getters” saying right now…”Maybe you cannot do it but I can”….My answer to “that guy” is….”Time will prove me right and our shared fallen human nature bets against it!”….Jesus established a Church for a reason. In the Catholic Church we have the Sacraments and they give us the needed divine assistance to do exactly what Jesus asked of us…..When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as we would want to be treated…There it is…You got the “secret”!….But how you may ask do we learn to see Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament?….The answer…We must remove all the “impediments” that impair our “vision”…We do that by going to a Priest frequently in the Sacramental of Reconciliation…Then when we receive the source of all grace, which is Jesus fully present in the Blessed Sacrament…Our “vision” will be “20/20” and in turn, we will “see” our neighbor differently and as a result, we will treat him differently.

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord; and my father will love him and we will come to him.”

Mother Teresa used to tell a story…She would say, “You can not give what you do not have.”….Mother Teresa was a very practical woman and that statement is simply common sense…When Mother Teresa would tell her sisters this, she would relate it to the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary…Allow me to do the same for purposes of this reflection……The first Joyful Mystery is the Annunciation of our Lord. This is where an angel came to Mary and asked her to be the Mother of God…And as we all know, Mary said yes….Upon her confirmation of this request, she was filled with grace….So what does Mary do next?….In the second Joyful Mystery, which is the Visitation by Mary to her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant, Mary goes forth to assist Elizabeth……Now lets break this story down that Mother Teresa used to tell her sisters….First Mary says, yes to God and is filled with grace…And then see goes forth to her neighbor to give that grace away…..That is how we must respond and in that order…We can not give what we do not have….First we must “be filled” by the Holy Spirit…How do we do that? - Daily prayer, Fasting and living a Sacramental life…Then once we are “filled” with the grace of God…We “go out” to our neighbor, to give that grace away…If we try to “love our neighbor” first, without God filling us with his Holy Spirit, we will not “love our neighbor” in the way God asks of us, due to our limitations as human beings…First we must be “filled”…Then we must “go forth”…In that order…Why?…Because we can not give what we do not have

"Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today."

Today in St Mark’s gospel from Mass, a scribe asks Jesus a simple question and Jesus answers the question. If the same question was asked of you…"Which is the first of all the commandments?”…What would you say?…My bet is you too would say the same thing that the scribe did - I have faith in you!….. That we must love God first and then love our neighbor as our self…..Just as Jesus asked of us…However, the “trick” here is not knowing the answer to the question…The “trick” is how do we execute what we know to be true….Mother Teresa breaks it down for us…Because we can not give what we do not have…And Mother Teresa learned this from Our Lady in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary…….Remember, Mary first said YES to God, was filled with the Holy Spirit and then went forth to serve her neighbor who was in need of assistance….Mom knows best!….May we all learn from her example

When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as our self…There it is…You got the “secret”