This Sunday\u2019s readings tell us to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and strength (Dt. 6:5; Mk. 12:30). The Church has chosen an interesting psalm to shed light on these passages. It begins, \u201cI love you, O Lord, my strength\u201d (Ps. 18:2). The psalmist\u2019s words are more than a nice metaphor\u2014he is not simply calling God \u201cmy strength\u201d in the way a man could conceivably use the phrase to describe his wife. There is something deeper going on here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a heresy that has plagued the Church throughout her history in various forms, called Pelagianism. Pelagianism is the (false) doctrine that we earn our salvation, or that we add something to the grace God gives us, relying on our own strength to get us to heaven. The Church has always strongly insisted that everything<\/em> we are able to do depends ultimately on God\u2019s grace. We could not so much as exist without it, never mind do good! We are more dependent on God than a newborn infant is on their mother. We cannot love God without God first loving us and giving us the grace to turn to Him. We cooperate with God\u2019s grace in the way that someone covered in mud might \u201ccooperate\u201d with a rainstorm to become clean, moving their arms or bending over so that the rain washes away all the mud. Without the rain or some other source of water, the person in this analogy could not do very much by trying to remove the mud with their hands\u2014they would merely spread the mud around more. With the rain, it suddenly becomes possible to wipe the mud off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God\u2019s grace is like this\u2014but even more profound and necessary. What, then, does it mean to call God our \u201cstrength\u201d? It means that everything we do is possible only because God holds us in existence, bestows grace on us through our prayer and the sacraments, and loves us so that we can love Him in return. To love God with all our strength, then, means to love God with His<\/em> strength; with all the strength He gives us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us then stop resisting our Lord and ask for the grace to respond wholeheartedly to His love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Sheedy <\/strong>\u2013 St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fot. Max \/Unsplash.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-strona-glowna-najnowsze","category-strona-glowna-slider"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n