“If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” The readings for this Sunday bring our attention on the meaning and purpose of life. The meaning of life does not consist in getting rich nor do our lives not consist of having possessions. The purpose of life is not to have the most “toys”- no matter how wonderful and beautiful and useful they are. No matter how hard you try to collect them, they cannot provide ends in themselves. But rather they are a means to an end, instruments to help us fulfill a much higher purpose, that of knowing and loving God.
Today's liturgy invites us to focus on Jesus and His witness of the importance of prayer as we are invited to the school of Jesus – a school of faith to “teach us to pray.” The Divine Teacher praises God’s generosity, mercy and attentive love in rich and varied ways and in turn tells us to call God the “Father”. Jesus’ life was a constant communication with His Father- a penetrating, most intimate relationship between them. Jesus’ example teaches us to pray to God, who is the most generous and caring Father, for all our needs.
We live in an age and a culture in which we think that there are so many things that we “have to” do. One of the recent polls of American women revealed that their greatest desire is for more time; there is not enough time in a day, they say, to accomplish all of the things they have to do, from work, to taxiing their kids from one event to another, to various chores around the home, to the countless other time-consuming activities that occupy their ever-diminishing waking hours. Scores of American men have long complained that, because of all of the various things that they have to do, they have less and less time to do the things that are really important.
We are to love God and our neighbor with all the strength of our being, as the scholar of the Law answers Jesus in this Sunday’s Gospel. This command is nothing remote or mysterious—it’s already written in our hearts, in the book of Sacred Scripture. “You have only to carry it out,” Moses says in this week’s First Reading. Jesus tells His interrogator the same thing: “Do this and you will live.”