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You should love the Lord your God
with all your heart, or your mind, or all your soul.
And love your neighbor as yourself.
A couple years ago the diocese issued
its own email address for every employee,
requiring every employee to use the same email system.
It was a great convenience as everyone had the same address dsg.org.
They also installed it with a dual authentication system.
I do not know if you know what that is,
but a single authentication system is your password.
You put in your password, and you are all set.
A dual authentication system is
verifying with your computer or phone
by a text message sent to your cell phone
or an app on the phone that authenticates called Authenticator.
Anyway, it is a bit of a pain in the neck to do,
but once you authenticate and are verified, you are all set.
The challenge is that when hackers start to get to the system,
you have to verify more regularly.
You have to keep up with it depending on how many attacks happen.
The reason why I bring up the dual authentication system is
that Jesus comes up with a dual authentication system
for discipleship in today’s Gospel.
He says, you know what the law says
“love your God, with all your mind, all your heart, all your soul.
And the second is to love your neighbors as yourself.
You do not get verified until you love your neighbor.
Jesus says this over and over and over again,
we are not verified until we love our neighbor.
In other words, we can come here and love God all we want
and come to the Eucharist and praise God all we want.
It does not count until you love your neighbor.
That is where you get verified.
The difference is that we are not trying to get into our email system.
We are trying to get into heaven!
That is the difference here!
I understand it is frustrating but that the reality is
that unless we live what we claim,
it does not really matter what we proclaim.
Jesus goes on about this against
the Pharisees and religious leaders at this time,
because they were saying one thing and doing another.
They are dual authenticated!
They were being hypocrites.
We have to be careful because we are the ones
who claim to come here to Church.
We are the remnant few here.
And those who do not come here, do not have that same responsibility
can do whatever they want because they are not here.
But because we are here,
because we choose to believe and act in accordance,
then we all have to act in accordance what we believe.
Otherwise, it draws into question what we do here at all.
What has happened recently with the increased number of cyber-attacks,
especially with churches and non-profits,
the email systems and all the websites are getting attacked
because they are easy prey.
They typically do not have top security.
Our diocese is pretty good about it.
And so the challenge is now that they are doing
the dual authentication verification every seven days.
That is painful!
The good news, at least on an apple device,
you can do your face recognition or fingerprint
but still it is a pain in the neck.
Let's just be honest.
When we come to the table every week,
we also have verification system.
That is every seven days too.
It is coming here and then living it in our daily life.
So as inconvenient as it seems,
the hack that is happening today as our world is under duress.
The world needs witnesses.
We are under attack.
The spiritual forces have gained momentum
against the good spirits. Why?
Because people do not think evil is real.
Oh, it is very real. It is very real.
And we have to fight against it.
How do we fight against it?
We do not fight darkness with darkness.
We fight darkness by turning on a candlelight.
That is what we did this whole weekend.
We lit a candle and that dispels the darkness.
We do acts of kindness, acts of gentleness, acts of loving and forgiving.
That is what dispels the darkness.
That is our verification system.
That is what we are called to do today.
So, who is our neighbor?
Later in the gospel we will hear Jesus tell us
but it certainly includes our family and our physical neighbors
but much more beyond the boundaries of our community.
We are called to love our neighbors who are most disenfranchised.
as the first reading says today, the alien among us.
Who is that for us today?
It is the homeless, the broken, the wounded, the LBGTQ+ members
and yes, the alien or the “illegal immigrant” who has nowhere to go.
We are called to welcome them and tend to their needs.
Wow! That is hard to hear but that is the gospel message.
It is what the Pope constantly calls us to:
welcoming all at this table.
But, there is one more little thing to this gospel.
It is subtle because it is not just a dual authentication system.
It is actually a multifactor authentication system
because it says love your neighbor as yourself.
It is very hard to give what you do not have.
We have to love ourselves.
We have to be kind to ourselves,
be gentle to ourselves,
give ourselves the rest that is needed.
When we are replenished and taken care of,
then we can give to our neighbor
what we ourselves have, the love of ourselves.
A lot of us are hard on ourselves.
We set expectations that are way too high
and we get down on ourselves.
It is very hard if we are down on ourselves to not be down on others
and it starts to snowball and roll downhill.
It starts by accepting God's love for us,
accepting that love for ourselves,
then loving others and loving Jesus.
There is a great way to remember this,
the acronym JOY - Jesus Others Yourself.
If we can do it that way, we will bring the joy of the gospel to others.
But remember, it is a multi-factor, authentication verification system.
Jesus, Others, Yourselves—JOY.
We need all of it to be verified as Christian disciples.
You should love the Lord your God
with all your heart, or your mind, or all your soul.
And love your neighbor as yourself.
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