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The challenge of loving God above all things
If we were to ask the people of our time, regardless of their religion, if they love God, the vast majority would answer in the affirmative.
Certainly some would answer that they love only a “superior being” that they do not know, or they would say that they are “spiritual but not religious” people, and that therefore they love some god, but they do not believe in or belong to any church. But if we were to make our question more specific, “Do you love God above all things?” I think that there would be a lot fewer affirmative answers, and there would be no shortage of those who would answer that “they see God in everything,” and that by loving things, they are already loving some god.
We Catholics have a special way of loving God. A love that responds to a God who in the Old Testament is described as “jealous” and asks of us not only for a very specific, but an exclusive love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
When we understand what it really means to love God above all things, we find that obeying the first commandment of our faith is an attractive and exciting challenge on which the happiness of our life depends.
Loving God above all things means, striving for holiness in daily life and in all regards. Because it is not only words that show that we love God, but good deeds performed during our entire life. The Servant of God John Paul II enjoyed repeating that “the ‘yes’ that Mary gives the Creator is a ‘yes’ to the human person;” that is, loving God above all things is not something that we do against our human nature, but, on the contrary, it enhances our human dignity and brings happiness to our life.
The Compendium of the Catechism reminds us that loving God means that we must “guard and activate the three theological virtues and must avoid sins which are opposed to them. Faith believes in God and rejects everything that is opposed to it, such as: deliberate doubt, unbelief, heresy, apostasy, and schism. Hope trustingly awaits the blessed vision of God and his help, while avoiding despair and presumption. Charity loves God above all things and therefore repudiates indifference, ingratitude, lukewarmness, sloth or spiritual indolence, and that hatred of God which is born of pride.” (Compendium 442).
But Pope John Paul II also warned that the great “yes” that we give to God and man, imitating Mary’s “yes” involves firmly saying “no” to many things that, regrettably, we often do, without understanding that in doing them, we are telling God, “I love you, God, but not as much as I ought.”
That is why the Compendium reminds us that not having “other gods before me” involves rejecting “idolatry, which divinizes creatures, power, money, or even demons; superstition, which is a departure from the worship due to the true God and which also expresses itself in various forms of divination, magic, sorcery and spiritism … atheism which rejects the existence of God, founded often on a false conception of human autonomy; agnosticism which affirms that nothing can be known about God, and involves indifferentism and practical atheism” (Compendium 445).
Considering if we really love God above all things should make us avoid the temptation of becoming “cultural Catholics;” keeping some traditional rituals, such as attending Mass only at Christmas and Easter; receiving the sacraments as a social activity, praying to win the lottery, but having our hearts and minds far away from God.
Let us sincerely entrust ourselves to Mary, our Blessed Mother, who knew how to sincerely say “yes” to the Lord, in word and deeds, that we can also become faithful Catholics, who “love God above all things,” finding ways to practice our faith joyfully and lovingly in our daily life.
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