Meditation:
Jesus gives us an awe-full (as in full of awe) gift in Matthew 22:
When asked by one of the apostles which is the greatest commandment, Jesus response was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus repeats this in John 13: – I give you a new commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another.
This was and still is quite an awe-full task; not the one word awful; the two words awe and full.
We are in awe of the immense responsibility this commandment imposes on us.
As I was thinking about concept of Love (capital L), several ideas invaded my meditation.
We know that one of the greatest gifts God gave us through Jesus is the ability to love – to love one another. Taken in this light, perhaps the second greatest commandment is not a commandment at all, but it is an invitation to share in the Love God freely gives us.
During the adult forum on Sunday, Joe demonstrated the effect of communion with God – the vertical communion between God and man. And by spreading that with our neighbors, we are spreading God’s communion horizontally, thus completing the message of Love on the Cross. Jesus demonstrated this Love when he forgave those who crucified him.
This is the second time in as many days as this image was presented to me. On Saturday, while attending the Diocese’s Intercultural Summit in Richmond, Bishop Shannon demonstrated the same vertical and horizontal relationship between man and God, and man and man when it comes to reconciliation and repentance. These concepts are freely given by God to us, only to be shared with one another, thus completing Jesus’s mission on the Cross.
If we are truly to share in the gift of Love, God’s Love, we must not only love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our minds, we must do the same for, with, and to all mankind.
After all, we are all children of God and we will all be recognized as this after we leave our bodies.
Meditating to Heal 