What's the greatest commandment. That was actually a question debated in ancient Jewish circles.

Jesus answers it. First, he says the first commandment is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”  This is not something new. Jesus is simply quoting the most famous text from the Old Testament in First Century Judaism, a passage called the Shema, “Hear O Israel” a prayer which every Israelites recited three times a day. (Deuteronomy6:2-6). That is what we have as first reading for today.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

“Hear” “listen” means there is someone speaking. “Listening” is important. Listen to a voice superior to us. In this modern age do we really hear Him? Very often we look for personal freedom and claim our autonomy and we don’t listen to the higher voice. I will choose what is good for me. That is what happened in the garden of Eden where Adam did not listen to the voice of the Lord but to the voice of Satan which always provides something that is desirable to our heart, to our mind and to our strength. A sound which always tells, you will become, you will get. But different from Adam, Abraham listened to a higher voice, a voice beyond his own autonomy. Thus, he became the founder of the holy people Israel.

The word “Israel” means the one who wrestled with God. You may know the story of it. Jacob the second son of Isaac tricked his elder brother Esau and was living far away from him. Later he thought to reconcile with his elder brother. While he was coming back to meet him on the way at night, Jacob had an encounter with God hidden under the form of a man. Jacob wrestled with him till dawn. In the morning, when God was about to leave him, Jacob did not want to let him go before he had received his blessing. Then God blesses him and changes his name from Jacob to Israel which means you wrestled with God.

In a way this wrestling could be understood as a prayer. Prayer is indeed a wrestling with God. We shouldn't let God go unless He blesses us. So, hear o Israel can also be understood as – hear oh people who wrestle with God or people who pray.

  “The lord our God is one God.” There is no doubt about that. We proclaim it in credo. We manifest it through our actions. Especially when we give alms or any donation to the church, we indirectly say that money is not our God. So even when we dedicate our time to God by reading the Bible, saying prayers or helping others, we say that time is not even our God.

Then he says: “you shall love your god with all your heart”. Heart is the seat of the human will and the seat of the human emotions. So to love God with all of our heart is to love him with all of our will. Then, love God with all of your soul. Soul is the unifying and animating principle of our body, It's the spiritual component, so to speak, that holds our body together, animates it, gives it life. The soul is our whole self as a living being. So we must love God with our whole self. Then with all our strength. It means to love God requires our effort, it requires our participation, it’s not passive. We actually have to do something; we have to engage in order to love God. Then Jesus adds one thing that was not included in the Old Testament, ie. you must love your God with all your mind. Mind is the seat of all our thoughts. That means we need to love God even in our thoughts. That is true. Whoever loves a person will think of him always. So if we love God we will think about God all the time. That is important, we need to think of God in every moment so that we can do as God would have done at that moment.

Then he adds a second commandment. “love your neighbour as yourself”. Sometimes we might fall into the erroneous assumption of thinking this is something new. But again, Jesus is just quoting from the bible, the Old Testament, from the book of Leviticus.

So Jesus is essentially boiling the 10 Commandments, distilling them down to their essence and their core, and then linking those cores to two passages of Scripture.

The “great commandment in the Law” is really threefold: We are commanded (1) to love God, (2) to love our neighbour, and (3) to love ourselves. We are to love God, for it is in loving Him that we are brought to the perfection of His image in us. We are to love our neighbour and ourselves as well because both of us bear God’s image, and to honour God’s image is to honour Him who made it. We are to love our neighbour and our self as a way to love God: God gives us our neighbours to love so that we may learn to love Him.

Why God demands from us love. Because God is love. It is not that God is like love but God is love. God in himself there is father son and the holy spirit. They love each other. And God created us in his image and likeness. That means we need to be in love. In trinity there is not only a love towards father or vice versa. But all three persons in the trinity love each other. So we need to love not only God the father but also his children, our neighbours. So let us reconcile with our brothers so that our wrestling, our prayers would be fruitful. So let us listen to his voice, so that we may get what God promises. What does he promise? “O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! Then I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes.  Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever.” (Ps 81:13-16). The real enemies are within us. Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Lust and Pride. For this, let's listen to Him and win with love our opponents who are within us.