On Saturdays, we pre-send the Sunday reflection for families - the same one Hearth & Altar subscribers receive at the table together.

Have a blessed Sunday - we'll be back Monday morning.

Sunday's Reflection — Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ex 22:20-26; Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51; 1 Thes 1:5c-10; Mt 22:34-40

Asked which commandment is the greatest, Jesus doesn't pick from a long list of six hundred and some rules. He names two: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. "On these two commandments," he says, "hang the whole law and the prophets," the way a coat hangs on two pegs rather than on a hundred small hooks scattered around a room.

That's the whole month, really, hung on two pegs. Every practice, every reading, every small act you've offered as a family this October was meant to be love aimed at God and love aimed at whoever's next to you. Exodus, in the first reading, gives the sharpest test of the second peg: do not molest or oppress an alien, a widow, an orphan, for if they cry out to me, God says, I will surely hear them. Love of neighbor gets measured against the people with the least power to make you love them, not the people it's easy to love anyway.

Today used to be kept as the feast of Christ the King, before it moved to the last Sunday of November in the 1969 calendar reform, and it's a fitting day to consecrate your family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose whole life was exactly those two commandments made visible in a single person.

Universal Prayer

• That everything we do would hang on love of God and love of neighbor, we pray to the Lord.
• For the unborn and their mothers, and for the closure of the abortion facility in our city, we pray to the Lord.
• For the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom we consecrate our family tonight, we pray to the Lord.
• For the grace to love the person right in front of us, not just people in the abstract, we pray to the Lord.

Faith in Action

After supper, gather before an image of the Sacred Heart, or just a simple crucifix if that's what you have, and pray an Act of Consecration together as a family, in your own words if you don't have a written one on hand.

A Note for Parents

Leo XIII consecrated the whole world to the Sacred Heart in 1899, and many families keep their own version of that consecration in their homes, often on this same Sunday since it once carried the feast of Christ the King. You can find a simple Act of Consecration prayer online if your family doesn't already have one, or pray it in your own words: offering your family's life, work, and love to the Heart of Jesus, holding back nothing in particular.

Ask your kids what "loving God with everything" would actually look like this week, in something concrete, not just as an idea to agree with in principle. Push a little for specifics: a particular choice, a particular moment, not just a general good intention.

Ask the second question too, since Jesus named two commandments and not one: who's the hardest person right now for each of you to love as yourself? Let the answer stay private if it needs to. Just naming it silently to God is enough for tonight.