Gospel: March 28, 2025
March 28, 2025 (Friday)
3rd Week of Lent
Psalter: Week 3 / (Violet)
Day of abstinence from meat (age 14 and up)
Ps 81:6c-8a, 8bc-9, 10-11ab, 14 & 17
I am the Lord your God: hear my voice.
1st Reading: Hosea 14:2-10
Return to your God, the Lord, O Israel! Your sins have caused your downfall. Return to the Lord with humble words. Say to him, “Oh, you who show compassion to the fatherless, forgive our debt, be appeased. Instead of bulls and sacrifices, accept the praise from our lips. Assyria will not save us: no longer shall we look for horses, nor ever again shall we say ‘Our gods’ to the work of our hands.” I will heal their disloyalty and love them with all my heart, for my anger has turned from them. I shall be like dew to Israel, like the lily will he blossom.
Like a cedar, he will send down his roots; his young shoots will grow and spread. His splendor will be like an olive tree, his fragrance, like a Lebanon cedar. They will dwell in my shade again, they will flourish like the grain, they will blossom like a vine, and their fame will be like Lebanon wine. What would Ephraim do with idols, when it is I who hear and make him prosper? I am like an ever-green cypress tree; all your fruitfulness comes from me. Who is wise enough to grasp all this? Who is discerning and will understand? Straight are the ways of the Lord: the just walk in them, but the sinners stumble.
Gospel: Mark 12:28-34
A teacher of the law had been listening to this discussion and admired how Jesus answered them. So he came up and asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is: Hear, Israel! The Lord, our God, is One Lord; and you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And after this comes a second commandment: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these two.” The teacher of the law said to him, “Well spoken, Master; you are right when you say that he is one, and there is no other besides him. To love him with all our heart, with all our understanding and with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves is more important than any burnt offering or sacrifice.” Jesus approved this answer and said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Reflection
“The love of God and love of neighbor.”
Jesus is asked to declare his opinion on which was the first of all the commandments in the Jewish Law. Some disputed the order and priority, giving greater attention to the rules that related to sacrifices or the Sabbath, but Jesus clearly declares that the first commandment, upon which everything else is built, is “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” None of the other commandments make sense without this foundation.
And yet, Jesus answers the question by presenting two commandments, not one. He gives the second commandment, too: “love your neighbor as yourself.” He does this to show that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparably linked. St. John the Evangelist explains this by saying that we cannot really love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother or sister we can see (1 John 4:20). And so, our love and compassion toward our neighbor is the acid test of how truly we love God.
