A Place We Know We Are BelovedRead Time 9 min

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deuteronomy 6:2-6

Hebrews 7:23-28

Mark 12:28b-34

What does it mean to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength?

A few weeks ago, a group of women and I began to read a book by Henri Nouwen called “Life of the Beloved.” The preface of the book introduces us to Fred, a frustrated journalist, who has come to interview Nouwen. Nouwen recognizes Fred’s boredom and so asks Fred, “What is it that you really want in life? What is your dream?” To which Fred responds, “I want to write a novel,” but he has no time or money, plus he is uncertain if he has the “stuff” to write. Nouwen offers to provide him with space and money for his dream. Over the years, Fred never does produce a novel, but the two of them forge a deep friendship which spills over into Fred’s invitation to Nouwen to write a book for people like himself: young and searching for meaning.

“Speak to us about the deepest yearning of our hearts, about our many wishes, about hope; not about the many strategies for survival, but about trust. Speak to us about a vision larger than our changing perspectives and about a voice deeper than the clamoring of our mass media. Speak to us about God,” Fred insisted.

Pondering the challenge, Nouwen determines to write his book as a personal letter to Fred hoping young people will “listen in” on their conversation. Over the years, thousands have.

The word Nouwen reflects upon initially is the word “Beloved.” He gleans this word from the Baptism of Jesus, when the skies opened and he heard his Father’s voice saying, “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Reflecting upon the word “Beloved,” Nouwen is convinced that all of us, as our starting point in the spiritual life, must realize that we are beloved of God. Love starts there, realizing that God’s arms enfold each of us, that he counts every hair on our head, that he writes our names on the palms of his hand and that God hides us in the shelter of his wings.

The Shema, the command to love God with all of one’s heart, soul and strength, emerges from a covenantal relationship that God established with his people, Israel. It is God who initiates this love, and it is our love which is given back to him. St. Mark employs the same law and only adds the part to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

When I receive the belovedness of God, then I can give it away. When I know the Lord’s favor, I can favor others. But, as Nouwen suggests, the greatest temptation to knowing we are beloved is self-rejection, when we believe in voices that call us worthless and unlovable. Then success, popularity and power are easily seen as attractive solutions to our own self-hatred. Then I can become arrogant because of my fear of being rejected.

The temptation when reading the law as the young scribe configures it is to think that to love God with the intensity of heart, mind, soul and strength can be one’s own doing. It cannot be that. We must find our place in union with the Beloved One, being filled with his love and his acceptance and his forgiveness that will touch us enough to give it to others.

We are too insecure otherwise. We want to hide and run from the invitation to be loved because we risk being exposed to our own fears, our own selfishness and deep caverns of longing for a world which cannot satisfy. But it is God who liberates us as we surrender to his abiding love. To love God with our whole heart has as its starting point prayer. For prayer will bring us into a relationship with Jesus it will bring us to renew our own baptismal covenant with a God who calls each of us son and daughter.

To love God with our whole mind challenges each of us to recognize the beauty and creativity of the mind. The mind longs for truth, but it needs to be awakened to emerge from dark habits. Difficult as it might be to break away from the harangue of social media and violent movies, we must. For St. Paul, who wrote his letter to the Philippians while in prison, encourages all of us to put our minds on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and gracious. To think upon those things worthy of praise so that the God of peace will abide with us. (Philippians 4:8)

The soul is our whole self. It is where God exists in that virginal point where no evil can come. Yet, we sabotage the gift by sniffing out substitutes for God: power, material goods, accolades, things that cause our souls to be ill at ease, without peace. Those restless anxieties are simply God calling us back to our belovedness, back to spending time away from the noise of the world to the simple prayer room where the relationship with our precious Lord can be reestablished.

Finally, to love God with all our strength is to simply not give up. In the letter to the Hebrews, written to a weary Jewish Christian community who found the call of God just too hard, the writer invokes them to ponder Jesus Christ, their high priest who has passed through the travail of suffering for them, and who urges this community not to give up but to run the race with conviction and hope.

As the scribe suggests, to love God with intensity is worth more than any sacrifice. So let us take to heart the commandment to love God with intensity and our neighbor beyond ourselves. Let us examine where our hearts, minds and souls harbor, and let us bring them back to the place where we know we are beloved.