There was once a cruel emperor called Severus Maximus, who determined to stamp out the Christian Faith. The way he would do this, he decided, was to destroy every copy of the Bible in existence; then Christians would no longer know in what their Faith consisted. Accordingly he ordered his soldiers to enter every church, every library, every school and every house, and confiscate all the Bibles they found.

The Pope called a meeting of his cardinals and bishops and theologians and said, ‘We’re in a bit of trouble here. How will we know our Faith when all our Bibles have been taken away?’ One very wise bishop said, ‘There’s no problem. Before we hand over our Bibles, the Church must simply commit the Bible to memory. This emperor will not live for ever. When he dies, as he will, and a kinder ruler takes his place, we can write out the Bible again from memory.’

But the Pope said, ‘The Bible consists of thousands and millions of verses. Nobody could ever commit it all to memory.’ The bishop replied, ‘No one person could remember all those millions of verses. But there are millions of people in the Church. Every Christian must memorise one verse. He must regard that verse as his greatest treasure, and repeat it over and over again to himself. He must live that verse, embody that verse; and when the persecution is over, he must deliver it back to the Church to be recorded again in the Bible.’

Now I’d better tell you at this point that the story isn’t true. I made it up. But suppose it were. Which verse would you like to be entrused to you? You might be out of luck, and be asked to remember, ‘My brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man.’ But suppose, just suppose, you were fortunate enough to draw the verse we hear in today’s Gospel: ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’ Imagine the enormous privilege of being chosen to preserve that verse for posterity; saying it over and over again to make sure you didn’t forget it; actively putting it into practice, seeking out new ways of showing your love for God and for your neighbour. Even if everyone else in the world forgot their verse, if you could only remember that one verse, you would be preserving the heart of the Gospel, preserving the very essence of the Bible.

It doesn’t matter that my story isn’t true. You can still commit that verse to memory, you can still live it day by day as if it were the only thing that mattered. And indeed it is the one thing that really does matter, the one thing needful, the reason for your existence: You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.