Daily Reflections — March 13, 2026

0:00Welcome to our day of the reflection for this Friday, March 13th. And of course, every Friday, we remember good Friday and we fast. We make a sacrifice, especially during Lent. And our Lent and Journey, we abstain from meat. Make that sacrifice. And remember that Christ, Yoke, is easy and is burdened light when we are motivated by love. So offer it up for somebody that you love. And that will make the sacrifice much easier. Now today we have a great invitation from God. He calls us to return to Him. And so the Prophet Hosea, we get this idea of return, return, echoed over and over again. And that word return in Hebrew, shoe, means to turn. And it's to turn away from what I want to what God wants. I'm turning from my pursuits to God. And so I love that concrete metaphor that the Hebrews use for repentance. It's not an abstract idea. It's a very concrete

1:04idea of turning and putting one's attention on the right things on God. And then God gives a promise that he will give healing and love if we turn towards Him. And so that's a beautiful image. And then the Saul today, Psalm 81, echoes this invitation to return and turn to the Lord. And it tells us the means by which we do that. The key thing is to hear, to listen, shema, to listen or hear as it, that Hebrew word shema means, to listen to God is the means by which we turn towards Him. That will be important. And then Jesus in the gospel today gives us the heart of his word and of his teaching and the way and the heart of everything in terms of following God. And what we have to listen to most of all, and he is asked by a scribe, what is the greatest of all the commandments? So there's the whole Old Testament. You've got so many books of the Bible. And here to the scribe

2:06is giving a really hard question to Jesus, like what's the most important? And of course Jesus, who is God, who is the author of all that word, is going to give us a great insight into that. And he says, you know, which is first of all the commandments. And he says, the first is this. And now he quotes the shema, the call to listen to hear God. And he says, quoting the shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. Now notice one key little word that he uses repeatedly. All, A-L-L, all. We are to love God with all of our soul, all of our strength, all of our mind, all of our heart, not just with a part, not just partially, but all. And here Jesus highlights something that goes back all the way to the Torah to the great Jewish prayer, the shema that we find in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, and following. And that is this great, some is

3:10this great call by God to Israel. He invites us to total love. And that's why we'll find in the Psalms, David speaking in Psalm 119 and Psalm 27, and so many other Psalms he talks about loving God with all his heart. And in doing that, David is echoing his own reflection and meditation on this great prayer, this greatest of all Jewish prayers, the shema, which summons us to love God wholeheartedly with all our heart. So today let's reflect on that word all. Am I loving God with all my strength? Am I loving God with all my mind, using my mind to study and learn? Am I loving God with all my heart, with all my love, right? That is the question during this Lenten journey. So let's take that to prayer today. May the Lord bless and keep you. Did you know that the primary title for Jesus in the Gospels is Teacher Rabbi, right? He's constantly called Teacher over and over and over again by his disciples,

4:12even by his enemies. He's respectfully called Teacher Jesus came to teach us about the truth, about his father, the truth about ourselves, the truth of salvation. And that is why at the Augustine Institute, the heart of remission is to help Catholics understand, live and share their faith. And with our short courses, we are taking the treasures of our graduate school and of our faculty and professors and making them available to everyone else. Through our short courses, you get a graduate level course in short without the difficult exams, without the difficult papers that you have to write. You get this wisdom of Christ boiled down for you in a short appetizer, so to speak. And so we want you to get these short courses that you can grow closer to Christ because God calls us to love God not only with all of our heart, not only with all of our soul and all of our strength, but with all of our mind. We want you to know the mind of Christ. And so we provide these great short courses with renowned faculty at the Augustine Institute.

5:14These are wonderful short courses and you can find out more at Augustine.edu slash course. Augustine.edu slash course. Learn about our short courses and you'll find out why many people who find them find them incredibly appealing and they love them. And so I think you will too. May the Lord bless and keep you. To sign up and start receiving these daily reflections in your inbox every day for free, visit form.org slash daily and enter your email. You can watch these reflections in video format by visiting formed.org. Formed as an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustine Institute with award-winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, e-books, and family-friendly kids programming. To support the mission of the Augustine Institute, please visit missioncircle.org.