To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice. (Mark 12:33)
The scribe in Sunday’s Gospel is praised by Jesus for saying this. Despite the Jews’ constant animal sacrifices in the Temple, the root of the Mosaic Law consisted in only one offering of the animals they had started to worship in Egypt, a sacrifice never meant to be repeated (Exodus 24:3-8). Only after they worshipped the golden calf did God command constant sacrifices in order to avoid making these animals idols: commanding a community to slaughter an animal makes worshipping it psychologically impossible.
