Shema Yisrael! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One.
It is customary for Jews to offer this prayer in Hebrew with their eyes covered by their right hand as an act of reverence and to avoid all distractions when professing their faith in the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as described in our first reading today: Shema Yisrael! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
This prayer, called simply the Shema, is at the heart of Jewish worship every morning and evening, and observant Jews hope to die uttering the Shema as their last words. God himself gave these words to the children of Israel through his servant Moses, who as recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy immediately added:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deuteronomy 6.4-7)
So when a scribe approached the Lord Jesus to ask him which of the 613 commandments of the Law was most important of all, the Nazorean rabbi naturally answered: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And then Jesus added immediately a summary of all the other duties required by observance of the law: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12.29-31)
So, if we love the true God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and if we love our neighbor as ourselves, then living according to the first Ten Commandments of the Law follows as naturally as evening follows morning. Or rather it should follow naturally and easily, but then the quibbling begins. Who is my neighbor? What does love require of me? Why can’t I simply do what I want to do? What about my needs? Who said I have to keep these rules? What is love?
And in just this way we rationalize rebellion and choose to live by our own wisdom and then find ourselves snared in sin and held captive by our own disordered self-love and so we suffer the wages of sin, which is death. And that is why the world needs a savior in the first place. But what does he save us from? From the grave. From everlasting death. From nothingness and obliteration and darkness without end. Shema Yisrael! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
But even with that great confession of faith, the experience of Israel is instructive for Christians. After their forty years in the wilderness when the Hebrews finally arrived in the land of promise, the land flowing with milk and honey, and after the Twelve Tribes were dispersed to their homes, then the children of Abraham quickly found themselves drawn to the worship of false gods, the gods of their neighbors who were not heirs to the Covenant and who did not observe the Law given to Moses. And then for long centuries of struggle it was the constant challenge of the prophets to call the people back to fidelity to the Covenant and the worship of the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Their experience teaches us that when anyone ceases to worship the one true God, he does not cease to worship. Instead, he will begin to worship false gods because of the deep need inside each of us to offer reverent service to something larger than ourselves, a transcendent horizon far beyond the span of our own lives. So if the Shema is not on our lips and in our hearts, the confession of another faith will be.
We all want a noble cause for which to make sacrifice, a cause to which we are compelled to draw others by convincing them that this one thing is the supreme good, the highest purpose of our lives, an end worthy of suffering for and of promoting at all costs. And this dimension of human nature makes it easier to understand the zeal of those who believe in their given cause as the highest good.
Think, for example, of the partisans of the sexual revolution and the global green movement. Both of these projects inspire evangelical fervor in their adherents and become for their followers a comprehensive way of understanding and organizing all of life. Both movements have creeds and sacraments and rituals and means of initiating disciples and expelling heretics, and both make universal claims about reality that shape all of human existence around their principles and purposes.
These same observations can also be made about the many expressions of wokeness which fill our culture, including the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement and the transgender ideology. Not even the Spanish Inquisition acted with the vigor and radical commitment to purity we now see at work in these systems of belief which are religions in all but name.
So, those who will not serve the one true God will in the end serve other gods, as the children of Israel discovered to their shame, and therefore Christians must ever be mindful of this temptation. The Savior teaches us that we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and that we must love our neighbor as our ourself. And precisely because we love our neighbor, we must bear witness to the complete truth about God and man revealed first to Israel and then finally and fully revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The end of this liturgical year arrives in three weeks with the great Solemnity of Christ the King, and the whole Church will be reminded once again that at the End of Days the glory of God will be revealed to all flesh and the world will perish in fire. That sobering truth teaches us that nothing which passes away can finally make an ultimate claim on our hearts and minds. And all things pass away except for God.
And that is why the mission of Christians is not ordered to any worldly purpose. After all, Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world. Our mission is to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls to the ends of the earth and the End of Days, and this we do by teaching and living the words of the Savior: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
But in our time not a few Christians, and even some of those ordained to lead the Church, have lost sight of the Church’s supernatural mission and have become entranced by worldly ways of thinking as demonstrated by the regular agitations to change the doctrine of our faith on, among other things, matters of sexual morality and the sacraments of Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders.
These confusions then require us to take time from proclaiming the Gospel to clarify over and again what should be clear to all from the beginning: no person (no matter what office he may hold in the Church) no person may add to, delete from, or change anything in the deposit of faith which is the supernatural gift of divine revelation given to the Church to be handed on from generation to generation until the End of Days.
Just as the children of Israel were tempted to worship the gods of their neighbors, Christians are also drawn to the false religions of every time and place, and so we must be reminded in every generation that Jesus Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that we are all called by our Baptism “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 1:3)
Friends, no matter what disappointments we face in the Church or the world, Jesus Christ is still Lord. His bride the Church is still the witness to his life, death, and Resurrection. His Gospel is still the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And in the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. (cf Romans 1:16-17)
And so even now, taught by the words spoken by the Lord Jesus as the summary and keystone of the Law, we can say every day with absolute certainty and with indescribable joy: Shema Yisrael! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
This is the text of my homily for 3 November 2024, the 31st Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman