Robert Barron - The Highest Good Is God Alone
Peace be with you. Friends, I know I say this a lot, but the readings today take us to very holy ground for this 31st Sunday of the year. Reading one is taken from the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy. I'm going to encourage you, get out your Bibles, and at some point, read this sixth chapter, because it contains what's called in Hebrew the Shema. It's this prayer that is fundamental to Jewish theology and spirituality. And here's what makes it doubly sacred today, is the gospel is the story of the person asking Jesus, "What's the greatest teaching of the law? What's the most important law"? And Jesus recites the Shema.
The Son of God, the Torah made flesh, is now affirming what we hear in Deuteronomy six. It's like we can't get any more sacred, or any clearer indication of how we should govern our lives. What's the Shema? Well, you look in Deuteronomy six. I'm going to read just the first famous line, Shemá Israel, Adonai Eloeinu, Adonai Ejad. That's Hebrew with the Chicago accent, by the way. What that means is "Hear. Shema, listen, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone". And then what follows, "Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength". As I say, it's the cornerstone of Jewish theology, of Jewish religion and spirituality. It is, in my judgment, the greatest gift that Israel gave to the world is this clear, unambiguous monotheism, the belief in the one God.
Now, I can make a metaphysical argument for this. We say that God is the unmoved mover. God is the uncaused cause. God is the non-contingent source of contingent being. God is the unconditioned reality, all of that. The implication is that God must be purely actual. There's nothing in God's being that needs further realization. No cause that can influence him from the outside. That means in Thomas Aquinas' language, God is actus purus, he's pure act. Actus in Thomas's Latin translates energeia in Greek. So energy, God is pure realization, actualized reality. Well, see, if you have two things, got A and B, A is not B, B is not A. That means both A and B are marked by something like potentiality or non-being or contingency. And that's why God cannot be many. We can't speak of many gods. Or Aquinas will say in God essence and existence coincide.
So to be God is to be to be. God's nature is simply being itself. Well, what's outside of that? Well, I can't name something truly existent that's outside of that. So God's unity is a metaphysical truth. Now, I'm not teaching metaphysics today. I'm preaching. So what's, I think, most important for our purposes, the spiritual implications of this great claim. Hear, oh, Israel. Look at first of all, Shema. Listen, hear. Greek culture is very much ordered toward the visual, to see the forms, to see the light. I got it. I understand. Light, even the light bulb image. Well, there's something about the eyes and about seeing that puts us, in a way, in the driver's seat. Oh, I can see that. Even things at a distance that aren't trying to show themselves, but I can uncover them with my kind of eagle-eyed vision.
Which is why, and I think there's something to this, scholars suggest, the listening element is so important in Judaism because it's not an aggressive rationality that comes to see things. It's not with the eagle eyes of our minds that things light up and become clear. No, no, when it comes to God, we're not in the driver's seat. Rather, we have to wait to hear a voice. God is a person who has to disclose Himself to us. It's why listening is so important. Think of the beginning of salvation history. It's really with Abraham who hears the voice. He hears the higher call. He's not in control of it. He was settled in his life in Ur of the Chaldees. He's an old man with his family around him, and he didn't have to go anywhere. He had no further plans. But then comes this voice, comes this summons. It's true in all prophets. It's true in Jonah. It's true in those whom Jesus calls. Shema, Israel. Listen, Israel.
The higher voice is summoning you. And then why is the stress placed upon the unity of God? The Lord your God is Lord alone. Well, first of all, Joseph Ratzinger saw this. The Shema is echoed in the great Christian creeds. When we say Credo in unum Deum, I believe in one God. It's very important. Go across the cultures of the world, across time, you're going to find a lot of civilizations that believed in many gods, even very high civilizations, Greece and Rome and so on. Looking in the Hindu context, the belief in the many gods. Listen, Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. Now, what does that mean? That means there's no competition when it comes to the summum bonum, the highest good, the highest good. There can be at that level, no competition.
See, if there are many gods, well then, oh, there's all kinds of high goods. I can pursue this one, that one. Maybe I get tired of this one, I go to that one. If God is one, then the highest good is God alone. And therefore, the soul cannot be, should not be divided among a variety of goods, but rather it must be as Kierkegaard put it, about one thing. No country, no culture, no political leader, not your family, not anything can compete with the summum bonum, with the supreme good. The constant temptation of us sinners is to violate this principle, isn't it? Is I say, oh, I might pay lip service to God. Oh sure, God, and God is one. But look at your life. What de facto is the summum bonum? There's no question more important than that in the spiritual order.
What in your life right now, if you're being brutally honest and a good spiritual director, good confessor will press this with you. What is the summum bonum? And now, if we're honest, spiritually, we might come up with something like, well, my career, I guess, or my family, or my political party, or my obsession with history. Whatever it is, there's something highest that's governing my life, that's pulling me in its direction. Think of a sink and everything's going down this one drain. Well, ultimately, our lives are like that. Shema Yisrael. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. I, your God, am a jealous God, we hear. Don't play that as God having emotional issues. It's this point. It's this point that's being made. I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I don't brook any opposition.
There can be no opposition. Hear, O Israel, the Lord, your God is alone. So the whole of our life must fall now into order along that line. And you say, "Okay, okay, I get that". And the implication, which Jesus confirms, is therefore you have to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul and all your strength. You say, "Well, I guess I've got to become a Trappist monk. My entire life must be utterly dedicated to God". Well, no, let's go back to metaphysics again. So all that exists reflects God. All that exists comes from God, and therefore, bears the imprint of God's beauty and mind and perfection. Therefore, can I love the Lord my God, in and through all things? Yes.
Can I see them under the headship of the summum bonum, the highest good? Can I see goods ordered in a kind of hierarchical way? Can my life now be properly structured in this harmonious pattern under the aegis of the summum bonum? Yeah. Now, I begin to see. Ah, my children, whom I love, they're a reflection of God's beauty and God's love and God's perfection. So in loving them, I am loving God. In loving God, I have a greater love for them. In loving my country, in loving what's good in it, I'm seeing some reflection of God. And so my dedication to politics, to making the world a better place is reflective of God's desire to make the world a better place. All the proximate goods can now be seen in relation to the summum bonum, to the highest good.
So you might be thinking, all right, I kind of got that, but what exactly is the summum bonum, what exactly is the highest good? It says God, but what does that mean? Go back to Jesus. Who is Jesus? Not just someone speaking about God like a prophet, but the word, remember, hear O Israel. Hear a word. He's the word made flesh. Therefore, what does God want? What is the summum bonum? Watch Him. Watch Him. What does He do? What does He say? What does He desire? That's what you should order your life toward.
Now, I'm going to take a last step here. We've done some kind of high theology. Let's do just a little bit more. What do we see in Jesus now, but the love that God is because the Father sent the Son all the way down to God forsakenness and then called Him back in the Holy Spirit so as to gather us into the inner life of God, which is a life of mutual love of the divine persons. Ah, now, I understand more clearly who the God of Israel is. How does St. John put it? God is love. The Father, the Lover, the Son, the Beloved, the Spirit, the love that they share.
Now, we can complete the picture. Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone, is one God, is one summum bonum. All the other goods are in relation to it. And what precisely is that Summum bonum? Love. So that's it, everybody. That's Christian theology. You might say everything else is a footnote. Everything else is a commentary. What's Christian theology is to order your life according to the love that God is. Think here of the little flower. We'll go from the heights of Thomas Aquinas to the simplicity of a little flower. But it's the same thing.
What's the little way of Therese? What's in every moment the opportunity of love. How, in every moment, do I will the good of the other? You know what, when you do that, you've ordered your life to the summum bonum. You've heard the word. The Lord our God is Lord alone. Yeah. And His name is love. So order your life that way. Put all the goods of your life in relation to that highest good. It's exactly what Jesus teaches. It's exactly what Deuteronomy teaches. It's the center of the spiritual life. And God bless you.