A lawyer asks Jesus: “Which is the greatest commandment?”
This is dangerous territory.
Ask ten people what matters most in life and you may get twelve answers.
Be happy. Be kind. Be yourself. Follow your heart.
Which is particularly risky advice if your heart currently wants revenge, another drink or somebody else’s possessions.
Jesus gives a much clearer answer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
Now that claim is either true or absurd.
There is no comfortable middle position.
If God is merely one useful part of life — something spiritual alongside work, family, hobbies and the occasional Sunday morning — then Jesus is asking far too much.
But if God really is God,
the One from whom everything exists,
the One who holds everything in being,
the source of every truth, every good, every beauty—
then giving Him anything less than first place would be absurd.
That is the argument.
If God is God, He comes first.
Not because He is insecure.
Not because He is lonely.
Not because Heaven needs better attendance figures.
God needs absolutely nothing.
He was not improved when He created the universe.
He will not be diminished when the universe ends.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit possess perfect life, perfect love and perfect blessedness in themselves.
Creation adds nothing to God.
It adds everything to us.
We exist because He chose that we should.
That means every one of us begins life already in debt.
Not financial debt.
The much more basic kind.
We have received existence itself.
You did not ask your heart to begin beating.
You did not manufacture consciousness.
You did not summon yourself from nothing.
Before you had made a single decision, God had already given you everything required to make one.
So when somebody says: “Why should God come first in my life?”
the Christian answer is: Because without Him you would not have a life in which to put anything first.
Then humanity sinned.
Now the situation becomes even more extraordinary.
God gives us existence. We use it against Him.
And what does He do? He runs after us.
The Son of God becomes man. He enters the world He made. He accepted hunger. Weariness. Rejection. Betrayal. The scourging. The nails. The Cross.
Think about it for a moment.
God does not need us. And that is what He does for us.
Christianity does not begin with us climbing towards God.
It begins with God coming down to us.
He is rejected by creatures whose very existence depends upon Him.
They spit at Him with mouths He keeps in existence.
They drive nails with hands He created.
And He permits it. Why? Not because He needs us. That excuse has gone.
He needs nothing. He does it because He loves us.
That is Christianity.
The God who gains nothing from us gives everything for us.
So now ask the question again: Why should God come first?
Who has a better claim?
Your career? It did not create you.
Money? Useful. But it has yet to raise anybody from the dead.
Pleasure? It passes remarkably quickly and then sends another invoice.
Reputation? Most people are far too busy worrying about their own reputation to spend much time on yours.
Yourself? You cannot guarantee that you will wake tomorrow morning, and yet we are occasionally tempted to appoint ourselves supreme authority over reality.
Possibly the least competent god available.
If God is the source of our existence, the source of every genuine good, the One who created us and then shed His Blood to redeem us, putting Him first is not religious fanaticism.
Putting anything else first is madness.
God made you from nothing. God sustains you now. God became man for you.
God shed His Blood for you. God offers to forgive your sins.
God promises resurrection and eternal life.
And we are discussing whether He deserves first place.
What exactly would He have to do to qualify?
That is why the commandment is so absolute.
All your heart.
All your soul.
All your mind.
Not because God needs more.
Because there is nothing higher to give them to.
To put a created thing above the Creator is not freedom.
It is disorder.
If I put things, pleasure, approval, first, they become my master.
If I put myself first, I get possibly the least competent god available.
Christ says: Put God first.
Reality will finally be the right way up.
Then He says: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
And notice why that follows.
If God made me, He made the person next to me.
If I belong to God, so do they.
Now the first reading becomes impossible to wriggle out of.
Do not oppress the stranger. Do not exploit the widow. Do not crush the orphan.
If the poor man gives you his cloak as security, return it before night.
“But it is legally mine.” Perhaps. He is cold. Give it back.
God does not allow us to turn morality into a game in which we discover how selfish we can be without technically breaking the rules.
The person matters. And why does the person matter?
Not because society finds them useful. Not because they are productive.
Not because they are wanted.
Not because they are healthy, clever, independent or agreeable.
They matter because their value begins in God.
That is why the unborn child has dignity before anyone has welcomed them.
Why the elderly person has dignity when they can no longer contribute.
Human dignity is not ours to grant, because humanity is not ours to create.
That is the logic of the second commandment.
And it also explains why love cannot mean just approval.
If you belong to God, your true good matters.
If a friend is about to walk into traffic, love does not say: “I affirm your journey.”
Love grabs them. Christian love is not sentimentality.
It does not call evil good because confrontation feels awkward.
A person can be sincere and sincerely wrong.
They can follow their heart directly into disaster.
So Christ is merciful to sinners and uncompromising about sin.
There is no contradiction.
He loves us too much to call poison medicine.
Then comes the obvious problem.
All right. God first. Neighbour loved properly.
Truth without cruelty. Mercy without lies.
Wonderful. Can we actually do it?
Not by ourselves.
And here Catholic Christianity becomes something far greater than ethics.
Christ does not merely tell us the right order. He restores it.
At Baptism He gives sanctifying grace.
In Confession, when sin has broken friendship with God, Christ forgives through the ministry He gave His Church.
And at this Mass, the God who needs nothing gives Himself once more.
Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
That may be the most amazing part of all.
He does not need us. Yet He wants us.
He does not gain anything by loving us. Yet He loves us to death.
We bring Him sin. He offers mercy. We bring weakness. He offers grace.
We bring hunger. He gives Himself for our food.
So when Jesus says: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,”
there is no tyranny in it.
It is the only sane response to reality. God is first because He is God.
And He deserves our love because before we ever thought of loving Him,
He had already given us everything.
So put Him first because no one else can possibly deserve it.
