August 21
Saint Pius X, Pope
Gospel:
Matthew 22:34-40
Today's Gospel: Matthew 22:34-40
(The Greatest Commandment)
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the
Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them a scholar of the law tested
him by asking, “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, and with all your mind. This is the greatest
and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your
neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two
commandments.”
Reflection:
Pope Pius X is remembered for a decision that
sounds almost unremarkable now but was radical at the time: he lowered the age
for children to receive First Holy Communion, insisting that even young
children should be allowed to love God with their whole heart the moment they
were capable of understanding what love meant, instead of making them wait
years past that point out of caution.
That decision came straight out of today's Gospel. Pius understood that the
whole law and the prophets rest on love, not on age, not on academic mastery of
doctrine, not on some artificial bar of readiness. A child's whole heart is
still a whole heart. He trusted that a soul capable of loving was a soul
capable of receiving.
Our Lady loved God with her whole heart from before she could have explained a
single word of theology; her yes at the Annunciation came from a heart fully
surrendered, not from years of study. Pius X, a peasant's son who became pope,
kept that same simplicity his entire life, famously saying he was born poor,
lived poor, and wanted to die poor, because loving God with everything you have
was always more important to him than any of the worldly influences around him.
Where is your heart divided instead of whole?
Rosary Man
Jim 🌹
Freely
given. Freely shared.
