Fr Matthew Reese

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
—Book of Common Prayer p. 324

Dear Friends in Christ,

For those of you who regularly come to the 7:45am service on Sundays, or any of the noonday masses in the week when we celebrate in Rite I, these will be familiar words. 

This is the “Summary of the Law” which we encounter in today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 22:34-46).

The Summary of the Law comes from a lengthy set of discourses in which Jesus debates with the Pharisees and Sadducees about the nature of the Kingdom of God, the Resurrection, and how his teachings relate to the Mosaic Law.

These men cast endless theological puzzles and quandaries at Jesus’ feet, trying to catch him in some accidental heresy or self-contradiction. Of course, they do not succeed. With each response, Jesus “amazes with his teachings.”

Though Jesus disrupts many traditional understandings of religious obligation and right belief, he is clear about where he stands: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matthew 5:17).

We’ve been talking a lot about the ten Commandments (and indeed, all the 613 mitzvot) in the Christian Ethics discussion for Mosaic these last six weeks, thinking about how the Law might constitute a basis for a Christian-ethical life. And one of the things that we have come back to a number of times, has been this Summary of the Law. 

All religious obligation, all the commandments, all the scriptures, must make their ultimate recourse to this simple, profound statement: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

But this is not a simple thing to do. The love to which we are called is so great, so capacious, we cannot hope to approach it alone. We can only attempt it with and through God. 

As I pray these words this week, I will be trying to grasp more deeply what they actually mean. How much they ask of us; how much joy they have to give us. I hope you might, too.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew