Throughout Matthew’s Gospel 22 Jesus engages in a series of debates with the local leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, regarding many practical, legal and faith issues. Last few Sundays the issues were that of preparedness for the kingdom of God and civil responsibility. Last Sunday it was about taxes to Caesar with the script sponsored by the Pharisees and the Herodians. This Sunday it is all about the greatest commandment sponsored by a lawyer. The learned gentleman came with one question: “which is the greatest of the commandment in the law?” We know that God gave
preference in opposition to the rest.
The answer our Lord gave to the lawyer was really a surprising
one. He actually went scriptural by bringing together two Old Testament
passages:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your might (Deut.6:4).
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of
your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.
(Lev.19:18).
We need to look deeply into our Lord’s response to this
important question. In this response, our Lord (drawing from the passages
above) said:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with
all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
And a second commandment is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
On these two commandments depends the law and the prophets.
Love is fundamentally difficult to define so, when our Lord
talked about loving, he tried to demonstrate how it can come about by
indicating that one has to love with ALL of one’s Heart, Soul and Mind.
For Christ, the whole Law, the Torah, from Genesis to the Book
of Deuteronomy, as well as the entire prophetic books, that essentially stress
true worship, holiness of life, social justice, obedience to God’s words and
covenant depend on these two - dimensional principles of the love of God and
the love of our neighbors. They are not contradictory to each other.
In fact, those that today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus
(22:20-26) was first addressed to, must have been struggling with this same
very tension. How should we worship God? How should I remain holy, since
the Lord our God is holy (Lev 19:2)? Are animal sacrifices, burnt offerings,
pilgrimages to shrines enough (Amos 5, Hos 6)? Based on this first
reading, the answer seems to be no. Worship of God, holiness of life, justice
can as well be expressed by not molesting foreigners, and by not oppressing the
widows and the orphans, and by refraining from extortion, all in the name of
giving loans to the poor
This is also at the heart of our daily experiences today in the
Church and even in the society as a whole. How to interpret or live the
relationship between these two commandments is a burning issue today. Some
of us today will interpret or measure our holiness of life on the parameter of
how much volume of prayer we have said or how many decades of rosary we prayed
yesterday, or even by how many times we have gone to confession or received
Holy Communion in a year. Or how well ironed is our robe! Based on
Jesus response to the Pharisees, that takes us back to the Pentateuch and the
Prophets these are important. But we must balance this up with the message of
the first reading, reaching out to our neighbors, especially the poor, orphans,
widows, the voiceless and the immigrants of our times. We ought to respect one
another, pray for one another, those in war torn area, and practically help the
sick and the needy.
The point here is that, the two loves are important. This is
what Pope Francis so far has spent his papacy emphasizing; reaching out to
those in the margins; spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, socially,
economically, politically, and physically, where we can.
Firstly,
Jesus teaches that Christian love is a commandment. And this is where
love is supposed to be understood. Love has nothing to do with feelings. It is
imperative to love. All Christians are called to love. Love, as a
commandment, was first fulfilled by Jesus himself, by hanging on the cross. On
the cross Jesus showed perfect obedience to the Father’s will. On the
cross Jesus showed his unconditional love for humanity. He offered his life for
all, friends and foes, without exception. Jesus gave a new commandment of love,
“Love one another as I have loved you”. He enjoins us to emulate His way
of love.
Secondly,
Jesus teaches that loving God is the greatest of the commandments. It demands a
total and comprehensive commitment to God. When Jesus said that we should
love God “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”,
it means in essence, that in loving, nothing is left behind; hence everything
is given. To love God thus, means giving ALL to God. You don’t for instance
demonstrate your love for God by just being physically present in Church; there
is need for spiritual and mental connection. Loving God does not just consist
in saying it; it has to do with living it out in our lives.
Thirdly,
Jesus is teaching that one of the most obvious indications of our love for God
is shown in what our Lord called the second, which is like the first: ”You
shall love your neighbour as yourself”. Today, the message is very clear and
challenging to all. We must at the end of this message ask ourselves if we
truly love God with ALL our hearts, souls and minds. We must also ask ourselves
if we truly love our neighbour not by saying it, not by writing it, not by
singing it but by doing what love commands. Love can only be love when it is
tried and tested. Love cannot be real if there is no sacrifice. The lover gives
without hoping to receive. You love only when you can give more than you can
receive. A typical example is the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross,
for our sins. Obviously we cannot pay for that. He demonstrated his love for
His father by what he did for us. God demonstrated His love for us by
sacrificing His son (himself).
To love
is not optional; it is rather a commandment. Our Lord made it clear in the
gospel of John that he is giving us a new commandment that we should love one
another as he loved us (John 13:34-35). Another reason why we must love is that
God is love. St John captured this very well when he said: “whoever does not
love does not know God for God is love”.(1 John 4:8).
For
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the love of God and the love of neighbor are two
sides of the same coin. A person who truly loves God cannot afford to hate his
neighbor. The love of neighbor is a reflection of love of God. This is a
reminder for us that we must be true witnesses to this commandment of love.
There are people who are devout mass-goers and, in that sense, they can be
considered as lovers of God, but when they get home they can have several
enemies. So, their love of God has not been reflected in the way they relate to
others. These people should try to correct that. There is no room for splitting
this love: that on the one hand, we can love God, and on the other, we can hate
our neighbors. Rather, there has to be correspondence between our love of God
and our love of neighbor. Amen.
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