By Sonja Corbitt

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” ~ Mark 12:30

You’ve heard all your life that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (see Mark 12:30). But no one ever told you it could heal you. What does that even mean—and where do we begin?

Perhaps because it seems too big of an ask, or because God is invisible, we usually skip the first commandment and jump right to the second: “Love your neighbor” (Mk 12:31). That seems more manageable, tangible. I can do something about that.

But first means of primary importance, and loving God whom I cannot see with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength seems impossibly comprehensive. It’s not merely something like “worship God only” the way the first of the Ten Commandments is, but more like “love God with every cell, and thought, and emotion, and action.”

Why is “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” the first and greatest commandment according to Jesus (Mk 12:30)? Because love heals.

Love stuns. Love resurrects. Love renews. Love transforms.

Pop Quizzes Reveal Love Wounds

Doesn’t your deepest suffering – stress – often occur when a relationship or circumstance activates an old, painful memory? The Holy Spirit allows such events, not to further hurt you, but to get your attention and show you where He is working to heal your love wounds.

St. John Paul II said, “suffering unleashes love.” It draws God’s mercy if we will open our wounds to Him. Cooperating with His will in these painful events invites healing love in your heart, soul, mind, and body, so that such events no longer hurt you or provoke fight-or-flight stress responses that are out of proportion to actual circumstances. I call such circumstances pop quizzes, because they surprise us with what feels like an emotional gut punch from left field. We learn to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength by cooperating with the Holy Spirit in our pop quizzes.

With All Your Heart

We begin where Jesus begins, with the heart, the reservoir of love and the place where your wounded love resides. Think back to the last time you can remember feeling strongly angry or resentful. Consider that anger is a defense against a deeper, more painful emotion, such as shame or rejection, in a perceived lack of love. What was the main emotion you felt in that last pop quiz? When was the first time you can remember feeling exactly that way? What is the memory (or memories) attached to that emotion?* With the Holy Spirit and in His presence, ask Him to pour His love into that emotion and memory. Ask Jesus to enter into that memory with you. Visualize what He says and does. This is how love heals the heart.

With All Your Soul

Then move to the soul, where you worship. Is there idolatry in your soul? Do you “worship” yourself by playing God in judging your wounder, both in the recent circumstance and in that old memory?

Jesus taught that judgments are projections (Mt 7:1-5). We always spot in our neighbor the fault we ourselves have, or subconsciously wish we could in some measure, with immunity. But that self-knowledge is “wrong” and “bad,” and too painful to acknowledge; it goes against everything we believe and hope for ourselves. So we subconsciously project the fault outwardly in accusation and condemnation.

Jesus taught that nothing entering man from outside can defile him; it is what comes from inside that defiles him (Mk 7:15). Therefore we will be judged in the measure we judge, so that final Judgment does not come from the top down, but from deep inside the human soul, up and out in projections (Mt 7:1-5). In the end, Jesus says we get to keep those unexamined judgments if we maintain them, and we will condemn ourselves with finality when they are illuminated at death. God forbid!

Judgments cause us to withdraw and separate from our neighbors, and therefore God. We even judge God out of our projections. He knows your judgments far more deeply and better than you do, therefore He allows pop quizzes in order to heal the condemnation in your soul and restore Him to its throne.

Condemnation prevents us from loving our neighbor and receiving the self-knowledge available in our judgments, and opening that self-knowledge to God’s mercy and love. Scripture is clear that there is no condemnation for those in Christ (Rom 8:1, Jn 3:17, Jn 12:47). How much condemnation? No condemnation. Incredible! How freeing!

So don’t judge yourself for judging! Rather, examine the judgments you made against your wounders in your last pop quiz and in the memory attached to it. Open those projections to God’s mercy and love. Forgive yourself and your wounder. Repent, confess, and move on. This is how love heals the soul.

With All Your Mind

Proceed to the mind: what is the lie that felt reinforced by your pop quiz? Something like, Nobody really loves me. No one takes care of me. No one has ever really loved me. Once you have worked through the heart and soul parts of the Great Commandment, you can discern the lie you came to believe about yourself with the Holy Spirit. This lie likely took root in the original memory attached to the emotion in your recent pop quiz, and nested in a seemingly reinforced pattern that all your pop quizzes reveal.

Ask the Holy Spirit, what is the truth you want to exchange with me for that lie?* We have immediate access to the greatest source of love-truth in Scripture, which is firm: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3).

Lies are like cockroaches in the mind, fast-breeding spiritual germ carriers that shun the light. Shine the light of truth on those nasty suckers and stomp them out every time you discover one so they don’t breed and nest in negativity, anxiety, and fear. This is how love heals the mind.

With All Your Strength

What if the symptoms your body produces – particularly in pop quizzes – are another rich source of self-knowledge? In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus drops this little nugget on physical healing: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Mt 6:22–23).

The church fathers understood this “eye” to be the spirit, comprising the heart, soul, and mind. When the heart, soul, and mind are “sound,” the body is full of light. If our emotions, memories, judgments, and thoughts are integrated and at peace, rather than fractured and splintered from woundedness, our bodies respond.

According to current research, 80–95 percent of all physical illnesses are caused by stress. Although the exact percentage is approximated and debated, the mind-body connection is so dramatic and well documented it’s not even argued anymore. “Stress” is the catch-all medical term for whatever destabilizes and aggravates the “eye” of a person—his heart, soul, and mind—and therefore affects his body. And is it not pop quizzes, with their painful repetition, increased intensity, inherent historical emotions, dark judgments, fears and lies that chronically stress us and cause the most stress?

In Salvifici Doloris (Redemptive Suffering), St. John Paul the Great pointed out that the Bible “often links ‘moral’ sufferings with the pain of specific parts of the body: the bones, kidneys, liver, viscera, heart. In fact, one cannot deny that moral sufferings have a ‘physical’ or somatic element, and that they are often reflected in the state of the entire organism.” What, then, can physical symptoms tell us about an “unsound eye,” how to heal, and how God is healing us—heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Because we need grace in order for nature to heal in this way, we pay attention to physical symptoms with the Holy Spirit in his presence. We ask: What is this physical symptom in my body communicating? If it could speak, what would it say? How does this symptom “help” me? What seems to be its role?

Ultimately, aging and deterioration are inevitable. Illness, disease, and death are not always the effect of stress or sin; they are also tied to the effects of the Fall and are part of the human condition. But what if we can be more vital and fruitful, now, and even while we age? “They will still bring forth fruit in old age, they are ever full of sap and green” (Ps 92:14). Integrating our bodies and spirits offers us dynamism and potency while we age.

Our bodies “know” when we’re not right inside. Seeking union with God always brings healing and wholeness of one kind or another. To believe otherwise is to discount the Lord who “heals all your diseases” (Ps 103:3). This is how love heals the body.

Love Heals

God’s love has the power to heal every part of us: painful emotions, fears, and memories; unforgiveness, judgments, deficits, and wounds of love; oppressive, anxious, negative thoughts; and weary, diseased bodies.

There is much more to say than can be distilled into a single article, but you can pre-order Love Heals here as a Christmas gift for yourself to enjoy and work through in Lent 2025. In the meantime, you can also enter and work through the steps more deeply in the free mini-course at becauseloveheals.com.

Full, whollyistic healing is your rightful inheritance and promise as a child of God in Christ. Therefore He commands that we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, not for His benefit, but for ours: the first and greatest commandment is a template for whole-person healing. Are you ready?

*Adapted from JPII Healing Center’s In-Depth Ministry Prayer and Encounter School of Ministry’s Ministering to Wounded Memories

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