{"id":16271,"date":"2024-11-01T17:17:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T00:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/?p=16271"},"modified":"2025-04-29T16:29:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T23:29:49","slug":"a-final-testament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/2024\/11\/01\/a-final-testament\/","title":{"rendered":"A Final Testament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Por Fr. Ed Liptak, SDB<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shortly before dying, Moses spoke to the people about to enter the Promised Land in a sort of last testament. It came in two parts.\u00a0<em>Firs<\/em>t,\u00a0<u>fea<\/u>r the Lord God and keep His Law, and thus earn the reward: long life, prosperity, and a rich land to call their own. But there was a\u00a0<em>second<\/em>\u00a0part:\u00a0<em>&#8220;Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!\u00a0 Therefore, you shall\u00a0<\/em>l<em><u>ove<\/u>\u00a0the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and all your strength.\u201d<\/em>Pour out every faculty of your being for\u00a0<em><u>the Love of God<\/u><\/em>. Teach that to your children. \u2013 No reward is mentioned. But let us add what is implied:\u00a0<em>Love the Creator God wholeheartedly, for\u00a0it is He who\u00a0loved you first with Love divine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fear hits us in the pit of our stomachs. Love strikes the whole of us. Hebrews takes up the refrain by emphasizing the nature of\u00a0Christ\u2019s\u00a0Love for us. It is eternal. No greater love than His could\u00a0possibly\u00a0be directed toward us.\u00a0\u201c<em>He is our High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, higher than the heavens.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0And He has loved us and will love us forever. He died for us! We\u00a0ought to\u00a0see this passage as a hymn to\u00a0Christ\u2019s\u00a0eternal Love!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Notice that it is the\u00a0<em>second part<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0Moses\u2019\u00a0last will and testament\u00a0that Jesus quotes to the scribe who came up to Him in our Gospel passage.\u00a0\u201c<em>Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.\u201d\u00a0Jesus added,\u00a0\u201c\u00a0The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>It seems that in\u00a0Jesus\u2019day, the people had neglected this. Much was Law, Law, Law, and the wrath of God. That seems to be why, in the sacred hour of the Last Supper, Jesus said,\u00a0\u201c<em>A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>M<\/strong>oses spoke to the people poised to enter the Promised Land, and though he spoke of both fear and Love, that second part seems to have been forgotten.\u00a0You and I have heard\u00a0the perfection of the Law from Jesus.\u00a0We seek to obey God because we love Him. Oh, yes! We do await a reward. It is Heaven. Nothing of this world would suffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cWhoever loves Me will keep my word,\u00a0 and my Father<\/em> <em>will love him, and We will come to him.&#8221; (Jesus in Jn14:23)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Fr. Ed Liptak, SDB Shortly before dying, Moses spoke to the people about to enter the Promised Land in a sort of last testament. It came in two parts.\u00a0First,\u00a0fear the Lord God and keep His Law, and thus earn the reward: long life, prosperity, and a rich land to call their own. But there was a\u00a0second\u00a0part:\u00a0&#8220;Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/2024\/11\/01\/a-final-testament\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continuar leyendo <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Final Testament<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":12531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[777629889,2343517,20310044],"tags":[782003455],"class_list":["post-16271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fr-ed-liptak","category-gospel-reflection","category-province-news","tag-fr-ed-liptak"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/intouch-scripture-graphic-feature.jpg?fit=1600%2C510&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-4er","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10336596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16277,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16271\/revisions\/16277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}