5 March 2027 · Latin Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malankara Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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
The book of Hosea ends with one of the most beautiful invitations in the Bible. The prophet has spent fourteen chapters naming Israel's unfaithfulness, using the painful image of a wife who leaves her husband for other lovers. Now God himself teaches his people the words of their return: “Take words with you and return to the LORD; say to him, ‘Take away all guilt; accept that which is good.’” They are to renounce the false securities they trusted: “Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands.” And then God answers with pure tenderness: “I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.” This is what conversion looks like from God's side: not a grudging acceptance, but a garden in bloom. The Psalm echoes the same longing: “O that my people would listen to me… I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
In the Gospel a scribe asks Jesus the question every teacher of the law discussed: “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answers with the Shema, the prayer devout Jews still pray every morning and evening: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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.” Then, without being asked, he adds a second: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The two cannot be separated. The scribe agrees warmly: this “is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus looks at him and says: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Not far, but not yet inside. What is still missing? Jesus himself: the one who loves the Father with his whole being and loves his neighbour to the point of laying down his life. On this Lenten Friday, at the foot of the Cross, we see the two great commandments joined in one act of love. Return to the Lord, says Hosea; love him with all your heart, says Jesus. Both lead to the same place: the pierced Heart of Christ, from which healing and new life flow like dew.
Theme: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.”
The words of return, the dew of God's free love, and the two commandments joined at the Cross.
“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the LORD;” Hosea 14:1–2
“So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Luke 15:20
Apply: Write your own short act of contrition and pray it each night until Easter.
“I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.” Hosea 14:4–5
“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
Apply: Notice one sign of new growth God has given you this Lent and thank him for it.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Deuteronomy 6:4–5
“Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” 1 John 4:20
Apply: Pray the Way of the Cross today, and at each station name one neighbour to love better.
God himself teaches us to return, and receives us like dew on a dry garden.
At the Cross the love of God and the love of neighbour become one.
Take-home resolution: Make one concrete act of love for God and one for a neighbour each day this week.
Dear friends, at the end of the book of Hosea God himself teaches his people how to come back: take words with you and return to the LORD; say to him, take away all guilt; accept that which is good (Hosea 14:2). God does not wait with folded arms. He goes before us and puts the words of repentance in our mouths.
And he answers: I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely… I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily (Hosea 14:4–5). This is how God receives a sinner who returns: not with a cold welcome, but like dew on a dry garden.
In the Gospel a scribe asks: which commandment is the first of all? Jesus answers: hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 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). And the second: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. They cannot be separated.
Jesus tells the scribe: you are not far from the kingdom of God. Not far, but not yet in. What brings us in is Jesus himself, who on the Cross loved the Father and loved us to the end. On this Friday of Lent let us stand before the Cross, take words with us, and return. Amen.
Children, Jesus said the most important thing is to love God with all your heart, and to love other people too. God loves us so much! Today, Friday, let us look at the cross and say: Jesus, I love you with all my heart.
Lord our God, you are the one Lord, and you call us to return to you with words of sorrow and hearts full of love. Heal our unfaithfulness, love us freely, be like the dew upon us, and teach us to love you with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves, after the example of your Son's pierced Heart. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Today we hear one of the tenderest chapters in the prophets, and the question at the heart of the whole Law. Hosea gives Israel the very words to say on the way home, and God answers, “I will love them freely.” In the Gospel, a scribe asks what matters most, and Jesus and he agree. The Psalm stands between them: “Hear my voice.” God’s love comes first, and our love answers it. The key words are return, hear and love.
Setting.
Hosea preached in the northern kingdom of Israel (he often calls it Ephraim) in the eighth century BC, in the last anxious decades before Assyria destroyed Samaria in 722/721 BC. His book accuses Israel of unfaithfulness in the language of a broken marriage, and it also contains some of the most loving words in Scripture (11:8–9).
This last chapter closes the book with a promise. It is worth knowing that some Bibles and lectionaries count these verses as 14:2–10, following the Hebrew numbering. The words are the same.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Take words with you and return to the Lord; say to him, “Take away all guilt; accept that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips.” (14:2)
God even supplies the words of repentance. That Hebrew phrase is difficult: the traditional text reads “bulls of our lips”, while the Greek reads “fruit of our lips”, and the NRSV and POC follow that sense. Either way, the prayer of the lips is offered as a true gift to God. The Letter to the Hebrews takes up the phrase for the praise offered through Christ (Hebrews 13:15), praise that flows from his sacrifice.
“Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses;” (14:3)
Here are the false securities of that time: a great power, a strong army and, in the following words, idols made by human hands. To turn to God means to name and give up what we have trusted in instead.
“I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.” (14:4)
Notice what comes first. God does not say, “I will love them when they have changed.” He says that he will heal them. Conversion itself is his gift.
“I am like an evergreen cypress; your faithfulness comes from me.” (14:8)
God likens himself to a tree, a rare image in Scripture, and one all the more striking because trees were often linked to false worship in Hosea’s day (4:13). “Your faithfulness” is the NRSV’s reading of the Hebrew “your fruit”, which the POC keeps (ഫലം). Even our good fruit grows from him.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that God’s only reason for choosing Israel was his “sheer gratuitous love”, and that this love is compared to a father’s and a bridegroom’s (CCC 218–219). It also teaches that conversion is first a work of the grace of God who makes our hearts return to him (CCC 1432). That is the theology of Hosea 14 in a sentence. It explains why the Church has us begin Lent, and every Confession, by trusting that God has moved first.
Setting.
Jesus is in the Temple in Jerusalem, in the last days before his Passion. He has been questioned by one group after another, and the Sadducees have just asked him about the resurrection (12:18–27). Now one of the scribes, an expert in the Law, approaches him with a sincere question. Matthew and Luke present a similar question as a test (Matthew 22:35; Luke 10:25). Only in Mark does the scribe reply and receive this word of praise.
Jesus answers from the Torah itself. His first commandment is the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5), which devout Jews prayed then, and still pray today, each morning and evening. His second comes from Leviticus 19:18. In this scene a Jewish teacher and a scribe agree on what the Law is about, and it is a scene to treasure.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;” (12:29)
The love commandment rests on who God is. Because he is the one God, he cannot be given a share of the heart while something else takes the rest.
“The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (12:31)
He was asked for one and he gives two, and then he speaks of them together. The love of God is proved in love of neighbor (1 John 4:20).
“this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (12:33)
He says this in the Temple itself, where such offerings were being made. Like Hosea and Samuel before him (Hosea 6:6; 1 Samuel 15:22), he sets out the order of things. He is not rejecting worship. Within days Jesus will give himself up as the offering in which love of God and of neighbor are one.
“When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”” (12:34)
A warm word and an open one. The man is near. What remains is the one who is speaking to him. He stands at the threshold, and Mark leaves him there for us to think about.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes this reply of Jesus when it opens its teaching on love of neighbor (CCC 2196) and when it teaches about the one God (CCC 228). Pope Benedict XVI begins Deus Caritas Est with these same texts, noting that Jesus united into a single precept the commandment of love of God and the commandment of love of neighbor (no. 1). The Church reads the Ten Commandments in that light: the first three concern love of God, and the other seven love of neighbor.
How can love be commanded? Surely one cannot order a feeling.
Pope Benedict XVI answers this directly: love can be “commanded” because it has first been given (Deus Caritas Est 14). The biblical word points to more than emotion. To love with heart, soul, mind and strength includes choosing, serving and being faithful, also on days when feelings are dry. And today’s First Reading shows the order of things: God says “I will love them” before anything is asked of us.