The Gospel for the memorial of the queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is taken from Matthew 22, chapter 34. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them, a scholar of the law, testing him by saying, teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like, shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

It’s so important that Jesus puts these two commandments in a particular order. What he’s really saying is, there is no way for us to be who we’re called to be. Loving, caring for our neighbor, without first understanding the love that God has for us. In our openness to God, what we have to get past is that need that we think we have been told to do, and that’s to earn his love. We don’t earn it, we just have to allow it to enter into us. And only then are we able to follow the second commandment.

The two are most essential, but the first is the most important. Please ponder the meaning of these scriptures. And after the music, I will close with a prayer. Foreign Father, we need to spend time with you. We need a time to just be still and open our hearts and minds to this love that you have for us. We know that you long to awaken us, a sense of it, a feeling about it.

So bless us in our time of reflection and meditation that will truly see you, feel you, know you. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.