Someone said to me recently, “I believe the First Commandment is the hardest one to obey.” That comment intrigued me, because I have always considered a number of things harder to do than: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” So I looked up what the catechism and recent popes have said. There is a lot more to the First Commandment than I thought. At its core, it is about living in relationship with God, then letting that relationship form the structure of what and how we love, what and how we think—what gives all of life meaning. Our readings today focus on the First Commandment.
The full text of the First Commandment in Exodus reads: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.” (Exodus 20: 2-5)
What does this mean? In 2009, in a general audience, Pope Benedict XVI referred to St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s great love of Christ as coming from his personal, profound experience of Jesus and his love. He went on to say, “And this, dear brothers and sisters, is true for every Christian: Faith is above all a personal, intimate encounter with Jesus, and to experience his closeness, his friendship, his love; only in this way does one learn to know him ever more, and to love and follow him ever more. May this happen to each of us.”
Pope Francis said the same thing in Evangelii Gaudium: “I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day.” (paragraph 3)
If we encounter God through Jesus, nature, reason, the actions of Christians, or directly from the Holy Spirit—what happens? God changes us. God transforms us. God’s likeness within us, there from our creation, embodied by our baptism, shines forth. Loved, we respond in practical ways.
Sections 2083 through 2141 of the Catholic catechism describe what is included in the First Commandment. These sections of the catechism describe what we do and do not do when we put God first. Included is a needed recognition that God is a loving, living Being who made us in His image. Our appropriate response to this recognition is to accept God as God and worship Him. We do this through faith, hope, and charity.
We are then to “render to God what we as creatures owe him in all justice.” (CCC 2095) That is seeing ourselves as totally indebted to Him. Nothing is more important to us than God; nothing must be another god in our lives. There must be no idols. There must be no nurtured doubts. There must be no worship of that which is not God as if it were God. There must be no empty ritual without heart, soul, and mind.
It was failure to obey the First Commandment that got Israel in trouble in today’s first reading. King Jeroboam had set up a “golden calf” in Samaria, even though he also supposedly worshiped Yahweh. He was hedging his bet: if Yahweh couldn’t do it all, he could also call on Baal. The primary metaphor of the book of Hosea is infidelity. Israel and its kings claimed to love God, but they also made idols of gold—just in case Yahweh was not enough. How like a husband or wife who has a lover on the side!
Today’s psalm, Psalm 115, focuses on the sin of idolatry, a sin against the First Commandment. The psalmist says it well, “Their idols are silver and gold, the handiwork of men. They have mouths but speak not; they have eyes but see not; They have ears but hear not; they have noses but smell not. They have hands but feel not; they have feet but walk not.”
You see, what God wanted Israel to remember is that He is a LIVING GOD. While His people are to worship Him, they are to worship Him IN RELATIONSHIP. They are to be bonded to Him, as a child is bonded to her parents.
Our God, THE GOD, is a living Being. He speaks; he sees. He hears; He smells. He feels; He walks with His people. He seeks to have a personal relationship with them.
In the Gospel today Jesus shows us what God is like when He speaks, sees, hears, feels, and walks with His people. Jesus cast out a demon that made a man mute. He “went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness.” His heart was moved. The phrase “moved with pity” is much richer in the original Greek. In the original Greek the word translated as “pity” means literally “touched in his bowels with awareness of the pain of the other”—what today we would call empathy. From his perspective of empathy, Jesus saw the people as “troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” So he cared for them.
Jesus, the face of God, called each person to relationship when He preached the Kingdom. He calls each of us now. He calls me. He calls you. The catechism leads me to ask myself these questions about my fidelity to the First Commandment:
How important is reverent, beautiful, heart-felt worship to me? What do I do to prepare for it? How do I hold onto it afterwards?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would I rate my faith, hope, and charity (as they are defined in the catechism 2087-2094)? These are infused virtues. What increases might I pray for?
How do I see sacrifice in worship?
Are there times when I use prayers or religious objects in a superstitious way?
If idolatry “consists in divinizing what is not of God,” do I revere any creature instead of God? Do I put what someone else says or asks of me ahead of what God says and asks of me?
Do I misuse religion—tempting God by presumption, profaning sacraments by carelessness, or just taking faith and Church for granted—do I ever think “I’m Catholic; that’s enough”?
How much contemporary humanism or atheism has worked its way into my thinking? Do I sometimes believe that we humans do the real work? Or see Catholicism as a “hedge your bet” way to live—got to be good enough to squeak by into the Pearly Gates, but mostly life is about what I want it to be?
Do I sometimes make God into my own image—not seeing Him in His fullness, but as I want God to be?
What do I do when I have doubts about God or my faith?
Most important, how can I nurture my relationship with this living God? How can I walk and talk with Jesus today? How will He love me today? How can I relish in that love and share it?
Prayer:
O Lord, thank You that You are a living, hearing, seeing, smelling, walking, talking God. You are THE God. You are my God. Thank You that You call me to relationship. Call me LOUD today. Call me CLEAR. Let me SEE You. TOUCH me. Lead me to good worship, that I might respond to Your love with fidelity. I am sorry for all the times I have pretended to worship but my mind and heart were elsewhere. I am sorry for all the times I have not put You first. Help me move beyond my hesitations to trust You totally and completely. Guide me today, that tonight I might be a bit closer to knowing, loving, and serving You with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind. Amen.
