In this morning’s homily on EWTN, Fr. Trigilio joked that it would not be possible to transmit all of Scripture in one tweet.  It got me thinking, though, about this passage from the Gospels:

“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’  He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.’” (Mt 22:34-40 from the USCCB’s New American Bible)

The Sri and Mitch commentary (The Gospel of Matthew [Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture], Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010) says this about this passage:

“Literally, the text says that the Torah and the prophets ‘hang’ on the double love commandment, as though these two precepts support the full weight of biblical religion in all its various aspects.  No other commandment of the Bible is properly observed if either one of these is transgressed or compromised, for the aim of all divine Scripture is to bring us out of ourselves to love and serve God and our fellow human beings.” (p. 289, emphases mine)

So, while Jesus was directly referring to what we today would call the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures, He certainly meant this for all of divine revelation.  So now let’s take just the main substance of what Jesus said:

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Without quotes, guess how many characters this is.  One hundred forty-one.  Amazingly (providentially?) close, don’t you think?  And I don’t imagine any of your Twitter followers will mind you dropping the last period.  So if you are a tweeter, why not convey “the full weight of biblical religion” right now and see what responses you get.  Evangelizing in 140 characters?  Why not!?