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| Your secondary insurance? |
When someone asks me “what religion are you of course answer “ Roman Catholic. What if the next question were “What is your secondary religion?“
What is your backup religion? What do you use to fill in the emptiness when God is not enough? The possible answers are a short list that is as old and as widespread as you can imagine: Possessions, power, prestige, and pleasure.
These are the things that we seek after when God does not answer as quickly as we might want, or when God leaves us still hungry and feeling incomplete.
The central insight of Judaism is there there are not many gods, but only one. A very important prayer that all Jews still repeat every day is Shema Israel, (Deuteronomy Chapter 6 verses 4-5): “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.“
These verses show up again in the gospels. For example Mark chapter 12 verses 29-31.
Look closely at this passage For a moment. It seems logical that if there is only this one God, then we should love this God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength.
I would be much more comfortable with the command to love God with “ most” of my heart or “most¨ of my soul or “most” of my strength. But that is not the deal! Unfortunately. I am to love God with all of myself, without falling back on any kind of secondary insurance policy, trying to fill the aching void inside my with possessions, power, prestige or pleasure.
A good way to examine my conscience is for me to ask myself “what is my secondary insurance?” And “have I fallen back onto my secondary insurance policy lately?“
Let’s pray for one another that through the gift of faith we will be able to rely only on this God who indeed is “God alone.“
Fr. Al, I hadn't read any of your blogs in a very long time, but today tuned in and enjoyed your commentaries of relationship, community, unity and love. My oldest brother left me a copy of Divine Dance in 2018, which I read as well as since then others by Richard Rohr, one of which you suggested Things Hidden. And then much of Thomas Merton and a few others too. I think you fit right in with those insightful and mystical teachers . Thanks. I'll try to keep a better pace in reading your blogs. Bob Cooney '55
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