What is the Greatest Commandment? LOVE!

Priesthood is a busy life! I have not found the time, nor carved it out, to write as often as I would like. But, I feel that I don't want to let this free moment go by without offering a little reflection on this Sunday's beautiful and rich Scripture and our elections this week...

Perhaps it is yet another one of those great mysteries of our Faith as to why great tragedies happen in our lives as individuals and as a people, this past week was not shy from offering us another such mystery. Hurricane Sandy just caused utter destruction and devastation to so many of our brothers and sisters on the East coast, neighborhoods obliterated, lives lost, memories washed away. It is within the pondering of man to seek the meaning behind the brevity of such things in our lives and the reality of eternity we dwell within. All suffering must be processed through the Crucifixion of our Lord and the Kingdom He has opened for us - any effort short of Christ will fail. Truth.

What this tragedy, as with others I can recall, did was to bring people back to their roots of common humanity. Communities that were once a collection of individuals, have become bodies of cooperation and charity. We have seen this past week the truth of who we are come through. We have seen political adversaries together arm in arm fighting for the welfare of their fellow man with no political filter or campaign stump. It is remarkable that Mr. Romney and Obama ceased campaigning this week for a few days. If politics were so important and defining to an individual, then why did they stop? Out of sensitivity? They stopped to be sensitive! THey stopped because ultimately none of those artificial divides mean anything. We are not Democrat and Republican. Those are made up terms to further divide and conquer a people. I can declare my self a "Jupiter Zambonni" and it holds as much weight in eternity as does our Democrat and Republican labels do.

I am not trying to be angry or pessimistic about government and the practice of law and policy - those are necessary entities in a well ordered society. But, there is a right way and a wrong way to understand it and live it out.

This week we're going to hear a lot about party politics, the economy, jobs, Benghazi, Medicare / Medicaid, HHS Mandate, the 'war on women', etc.,etc.,etc.. I can almost guarantee there will almost no utterance of the Gospel, the Crucifixion, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, Natural Law, Salvation, Eternity, The Good, the True, the Beautiful! We live in a society that is both afraid and ignorant of what is truly real and meaningful. It is the easy way out to just blame others for our problems, to puff up our egos and make others inferior, to deny others the Love they deserve so that I can seek my own power and gain.

What is the greatest commandment? LOVE! Love your fellow man as if you can see the very image of God impressed on their soul. Love your community as a microcosm of the great and magnificent Body of Christ. Love your family for the Trinitarian Love it reflects. Love your God who loved you so much He came to walk among us and allowed HImself to experience every degree of human suffering and pain and willingly let His persecutors nail him to a pice of wood in utter agony just so we could be with Him for eternity. Love your God everywhere and everyday!

Husbands and wives just don't love each other in the privacy of their homes and hate each other in public. Men don't love and respect their wives and children at the dinner table and then beat them and ridicule them at the store. Its absurd to love in some places and not all places; to love sometimes and not all the time!

LOVE! Be people madly in love with life, each other and with God. Let that show and be the engine and thrust of our very essence and being. The moment we let artificial boundaries, labels, divisions, prejudices and politics get in the way of Love - that is sin! If I don't allow myself to love as I've been commanded and as a response to the unimaginable love we've been given by God, then I am falling into sin and promoting hatred and darkness. That is not the path to eternal life, it just isn't.

It is sad that we need tragedy to bring us back to our roots and down to our knees in humble awe at the true beauty of our humanity and of Love. Let us take this experience of seeing the truth of Love and humanity and run with it. Let us take it into our daily lives and not suspend it or jeopardize it for anything our anyone. We have been called to love totally in all times nad places, let us not fall into the traps of sin that tells us to defy our consciences and our beliefs for some finite and fickle cause.