“Hear, O Israel! The Lord, is our God, the Lord alone.”
These are important words for they make up the Jewish prayer which is known as the Shema which is taken from the first word from that statement, “hear.” For the Jew these words are so important. This prayer is so important that it was required to be said at morning and night. This prayer is so important that it becomes the final words that you speak before you die. This prayer is so important that you make sure that your children know these words. The faithful would even wear a little box upon their forehead known as the “Tefillin” which would contain these words. Indeed in the Jewish faith this is the most important prayer.
Not only is this prayer important for them, but it must also be important for us. It must be important because in our Gospel Christ takes these same words and lists them as being the greatest commandment. He then joins them to the statement: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
That first word, to hear (shema), is most important for us. If we are to hear then we in return need to listen. If we are not willing to listen then we cannot hear. Yet in our modern world we are so busy that we choose not to listen. We cannot fool ourself into thinking that we are too busy to enter into prayer. You fail to pray not because you are too busy, but because you have failed to choose to make time for the Lord to listen to Him. This a choice that must worked at until it becomes a habit like the many habits that we have already formed in our life such as brushing our teeth.
The prayer is important because it reminded the individual of the necessity to be in love with God. Hopefully we too desire to have this same love for God. Not just the word “love,” but rather love which penetrates into our heart and informs who we are as a human person. If we have become convinced of such a reality why would we fail to rejoice in this reality and share this love with others?
Within the home parents are the primary educators and yet what have they educated their children upon? Hopefully it is love for God and love for neighbor. To think that the Jewish faithful would drill the Shema into their children until the knew this prayer. For us I encounter so many children who don’t know the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the commandments, how to make a confession, and this list goes on and on. If we are convinced of Christ and His love for us why would deprive others ,especially one’s children, of this same knowledge and love?
