[00:00] Praise be to Jesus and Mary. To the question, which is the first of all the commandments, our Lord replies by quoting

[00:33] one of the most famous passages in the Old Testament, the so-called Shema. In Deuteronomy chapter 6, after the Exodus, Moses addresses the Israelites with the Shema. He says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and these words which I command you shall be upon your hearts."

[01:08] This is the Shema. So according to the Shema, to love the Lord with all our heart, we need to have His words written in our hearts, and this is what our Lord quotes, but when you read it carefully, He actually adds something new. Our Lord says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your

[01:43] mind." That is the new command added by our Lord. To love our Lord, the Lord with all our heart, we must exercise the prayer of the mind, meditation, mental prayer. St. Teresa of Avila would say that undertaking meditation, mental prayer, is a matter of life or death for a Christian.

[02:15] That's very strong words, but this is the reality, because meditation allows us to listen to the word of God and have His words written upon our hearts. For us to live as Christians, we need to listen to His word. In the New Testament, there are two different words for word. So, number one is logos, which is the unchanging, eternal truths, the word, logos.

[02:49] And then there's rhema, which is a living word spoken by a living person. Those two are very, they don't contradict each other. The rhema personalizes the logos, if that makes sense. Logos is the unchanging, eternal truths, and rhema is a word spoken personally.

[03:19] And we need both of them, and this is what mental prayer and meditation does. We listen to the word of God, His logos, because those truths, as the Catechism would say, in meditation, the truths of faith, become evident and convictions deepen. The logos deepens in our minds, in our hearts. But also through mental prayer, we also hear His rhema, His word to us, addressed personally.

[03:53] This is where He affects the graces we need in our life. So we need both, and we need to exercise this form of prayer, mental prayer. At the end, when you think about it, this is how Our Lady prayed. She pondered all these things in her heart. When she pondered the word, the word of the Lord, she was living with Him.

[04:24] Here is the logos who speaks personally, directly to her, and she would ponder all of these things in her heart. May we pray like Our Lady, pondering the word of the Lord, both His logos and His rhema, so we may say with her, "Be it done unto me according to your word."