We know Jack, a clown-faced Punch smile gyrating, bobblehead hiding in a box and, when instructed by a fairy tune, pops out and scares the screams out of children. Who doesn’t flinch at such a spectacle! Perhaps we go at people the same way. We wind them up, and some hideous version of their former selves pops out. We have the power to bring forth demons. Nothing to brag about. Can we bring out the angel?

The answer is in another answer to another question asked by a certain scribe: Which is the first of all the commandments? Jesus answers. Love God with all heart, soul, and mind. And the second commandment – love others as yourself.

We know these commandments just as the scribe knows from the book of Deuteronomy – love the Lord thy God with all your soul, mind, and all your strength. Jesus and the scribe – a voice of the old and the new voice standing together; however, the scribe has not affirmed that he who stands before him is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. For it is written that no one goes to the Father except through Him.

This man, this Truth is before us in so many ways: in a tabernacle, a monstrance, on the altar, in the bread and wine, in us, in the person next to us, in the uncle and aunt, in the store clerk, in the nurse, the homeless, the bartender, the car salesman. So, we have the greatest thing we can possibly do with our lives and be surprised in another way when we pop open our bottle of love and share it with others. We just might be able to bring forth an angel.

The ’60s gave us a counterculture – the Beatles, and all was groovy, and we heard the lyrics of a song, “Love is All Around.”

So true. So true.

Prayer:

I can stretch my arms wide. I can listen with my eyes. I can touch rock and fish, sky and tree, and all who pass me by and those that don’t. I am every person, and every person is me.