“The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’” (Mark 12:29-30).
Here Jesus quotes the great Jewish prayer, the Shema (Deut. 6:4), as his first and most important commandment. We are to love God with all our resources. This is the first commandment. It is also the call to perfection. Jesus called the rich young man to a life of perfection, saying, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21). For Jesus, the life of perfection is to love him with all that we have, with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. If the rich young man had left everything for Jesus’s sake, he would be on the way of perfection. Therefore Jesus says, “Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). A true disciple lives completely and uniquely for Jesus Christ, and renounces everything else. He hates his life in this world (John 12:25). He loses his life for the sake of Christ, and therefore he saves it (Mark 8:35). He seeks the things that are above, where Christ is, rather than the pleasures and riches of this world, for he has risen with Christ and now lives a new and risen life with him (Col. 3:1-2).
The true disciple, who has chosen the way of perfection, is crucified to the world, as St. Paul was (Gal. 6:14). He is dead to the world and its pleasures in order to have a completely undivided heart in his love for the Lord. He leaves family, houses, lands, and can even renounce marriage to dedicate himself completely and uniquely to Jesus Christ with all the love of his heart, without dividing it even with a Christian spouse (Luke 18:29; 1 Cor. 7:32-34). He chooses the narrow way of life, which is the way of the renunciation of the world and its pleasures rather than the wide and comfortable way of the world (Matt. 7:13-14).
The true disciple has found the pearl of great price and the buried treasure, and he sacrifices everything else to obtain them (Matt. 13:44-46). He regards as loss all that was once his gain, and he does this to gain Christ (Phil. 3:7-8). Having sacrificed everything, he now lives for one master only, no longer for two (Matt. 6:24), and he has now but one treasure, not many (Matt. 6:19-21), because he wants his heart to be where his treasure is (Matt. 6:21). He does not want to divide his heart among the loves, pleasure, and riches of the world but rather reserve it only for the Lord. Nor does he want the thorns of the riches and pleasures of the world to choke him (Luke 8:14). He leaves everything else, because he does not want to be like a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle, since he knows that such is a rich man, surrounded by his pleasures, trying to get into the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:24).
If we live in this new way, we have chosen the way of perfection (Matt. 19:21), and God will in turn be to us like the dew, and we will blossom like the lily (Hos. 14:5).
EmoticonEmoticon