Jesus states clearly the most important commandments in all of Scripture: love of God and love of neighbor. These are the only treasures in the life of a Christian. Everything else should be subservient to those values and goals. God invested centuries cultivating an...
An essential part of being a true human being, a religious person is maintaining a good relationship with God. Over many generations’ prayer, fasting, and almsgiving formed a central part of religious life for the people of Israel. This continues to be true in God’s...
In the Old Testament everything about our relationship with God and others became reduced to interpretations, delineations, and limitations of God’s will. God’s law helped Israel control the human tendency to violence and revenge. God’s intention was for his Law to be...
Today’s Gospel comes from the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount covers three chapters that delineate a new vision, a new human being, a new way of living with God and living with others. It is a beautiful Xray of a true human being. It...
The question posed to Jesus in today’s gospel seems trivial to us. Why so much concern about which commandment is important? For the people of Jesus’ time, it would have been a very important question because they had a huge number of commandments, regulations,...
