The other day when I was at the library, a stranger came up to me and asked, “You’re the priest at St. Francis, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” I responded. “But I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m a student at Sierra Nevada College, but that’s not important. What I would like to know is: how do I know which religion is the true religion?”
“That is a great question,” I replied.
Having worked in prisons for over thirty years, I am always on guard for the con job, so I decided to answer his insightful question with a story that I had just read of a great and wise king who had three sons.
This king had a precious gift: a blessed ring. This blessed ring made the king generous, compassionate and filled with the spirit of love.
As the king was dying, each of the sons privately asked their father for the ring after his death. And he privately promised each of his sons that he would give them the ring.
The student interrupted and asked, “How could he possibly do that for each of the three sons?”
Well, here’s what he did. Before he died, he summoned the finest jewelry maker in the village and asked him to make two identical copies of the blessed ring. The three rings looked exactly alike. As he was dying, he met individually with each son for a bedside chat and gave each son a ring.
Well, it wasn’t long at all before the brothers realized that they each had identical rings and that two of them must be fakes rather than the blessed ring. Together they went to the village jeweler and asked him to help determine which one was the authentic ring.
The jeweler, however, could not distinguish which one was the blessed ring. So, the jeweler said, “We will just have to watch and see which one of you brothers behaves in the most generous, compassionate and loving manner. Then we will know who has the authentic ring.”
From that day on, each son lived as if he was the one with the original blessed ring. And all three of them were known to be generous, compassionate and loving. It changed their dispositions.
Then I said to the student, who was now anxious to leave the library and probably regretted asking me the question, “If you wish to know which religion is true, watch and see which community of people love God by loving their neighbors.” In other words, living the Greatest Commandment.
“Good story, Father, and better answer,” the student said. He then announced that he was going to another church to ask the same question.
Asking a good question means that you are honestly seeking the truth, not trying to show off or embarrass another person.
When the Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Isidor Rabi, was asked how he became a scientist, he answered by explaining that every day after school his mother would ask him about his day. She would always inquire, “Did you ask a good question in school today?”
“I learned that asking good questions,” said Rabi, “made me want to become a scientist.”
The Pharisees posed a great question to Jesus. “Teacher, which of the Mosaic laws is the greatest?”
Because the Pharisees scrupulously followed the letter of the law and because there were 613 different laws, it is understandable that they wanted to know which one was the greatest.
Of the 613 commandments, 365 were negative or prohibited, such as “do not lie” or “do not steal.” The other 248 commandments were rules or regulations, such as “honor your father and mother” or “keep the Sabbath holy.”
It only makes sense that someone would want to know which of the 613 different commandments was the greatest of all. It is a good question.
So, when Jesus was asked which commandment in the law is the greatest, it was without the slightest hesitation that He said:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
Then Jesus did the unexpected, and added:
“The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Jesus makes the connection very clear. The way to concretely love God is to love our neighbor.
The story is told of a priest who preached the same sermon over and over:
“Brothers and Sisters, love God with your whole heart and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.” The people were getting tired of it and asked why he only preached the same thing, Sunday after Sunday. His response was, “Well, it doesn’t seem as if any of you have mastered the idea yet.”
I learned these two commandments early in life.
As small children, our dad, with a healthy sense of pride and gratification, enjoyed telling us stories about our grandparents. They were French immigrants from Canada who settled in St. Paul, Minnesota back in the early1900’s. Like so many foreigners, then and now, they worked doubly hard to fit in and to become citizens of the United States.
The one place where these French-Canadian immigrants felt at home was the church they helped build, the Church of St. Louis, named after Louis IX of France, who was canonized in 1297. Their church was more than a place of worship; it was a home away from home, where people could speak their native language, share stories and belong to a community.
It was during the time when there was no such thing as a welfare system, public assistance, health care or food banks. The immigrant community truly depended on each other for survival.
Dad told us stories of how his parents would sacrifice themselves tirelessly so they could help the new immigrants who moved into the French neighborhood by bringing them food and whatever other assistance they needed.
This continued when I was a child. Every week we would go over to our grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner, and we would always bring extra food. Never did it fail that Grandma would immediately divide the food in half and leave the house. We grandchildren would always ask, even though we knew, “Where are you going with the food?” She would smile and simply say, “Next door. Our new neighbors are hungry too.”
Even after our grandparents died, our parents would still take us to the old neighborhood to help feed the elderly neighbors and the new immigrants. By then, the new immigrants were Hispanic, rather than French. After I left home, my sister continued the tradition with the next wave of immigrants, the Vietnamese.
Love is the very nature of God. Love is the root of our faith. Commit now to do at least one act of kindness in the coming week to show your love for your neighbor.
Live the two greatest commandments by loving God and loving your neighbor.
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