Faith & Mission

Reflection: the heart of everything

In last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus was asked by a lawyer, “which is the greatest commandment in the law’

Jesus replied: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.

And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The whole law depends on these two commandments.

This week, in his closing address to the ‘Synod on Synodality’, Pope Francis said:

 As the church concludes this stage of its journey, "it is important to look at the 'principle and foundation' from which everything begins ever anew: love.”

"Loving God with our whole life and loving our neighbors as ourselves, is the heart of everything."

In our violent age of war in the Ukraine and the bloody hell that is the Gaza Strip, it is tempting to come to the view that the natural state of humanity is solitary, nasty, violent and brutal. It is easy to understand why thousands of people around the world, representing all three Abrahamic faiths, demonstrate in favour of violence and reprisal.

In the midst of such despair, there is the small but powerful story of Yocheved Lifshitz. She was one of the Israeli captives taken by Hamas in the barbaric October 7 attack.

After sixteen days, this 85 year old woman was released by her captors. At the precise moment of her deliverance from her hellish ordeal, Yocheved Lifshitz paused and turned to grip the hand of one of the masked Hamas militants. “Shalom,” she said. This remarkable scene was captured on camera and can be viewed on line.

This simple act of human decency brings the challenge of the Gospel passage and the address by Pope Francis into sharp focus. What does it mean to love a ‘neighbour’ if they come from a community that has been shunned and reviled through politics or history?

Our College theme “Many Voices, One Community” shouts out as a response of our student leadership team to these global crises. They committed our College community to small, simple acts of human decency. This was at the heart of the faith of Catherine McAuley and her Mercy Sisters. The belief that in the face of a nasty and brutish world, acts of human kindness in health, welfare and education will make a difference.

As Pope Francis said, love is “the heart of everything”.

Mr Mark Hyland

Director of Faith and Mission