Loving God And Our Neighbour

Mt. 22:34-40

The Pharisees I am sure could recite the Ten Commandments backwards. They were forever trying to break them down into sections and prioritise them. Today’s Gospel shows them trying to trap Jesus and see how He would prioritise them. Jesus was too clever for them. He was not going to give them a big list as they expected but go to the very heart of the Commandments. He gave them two quotations. The first one came from the book of Deuteronomy. “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The second one came from the book of Leviticus. “You must love your neighbour as yourself.”

So the first Commandment that we must all obey is to love God with every fibre of our being. No parent ever lays down a command that their children love them. Loving our parents comes naturally. Yet, God our loving Father commands us to love Him. He knows how wayward we can be and He doesn't want to lose one of us. That is why He has commanded us to love Him.

To love God is a theological virtue. This means that we can only love God with His help. It does not come naturally. The other two theological virtues are faith and hope. If we allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit and give some thought to God’s creation there are so many incentives for loving God.

We need only observe the beautiful world around us and come to the conclusion that our God is more than a genius. He is loving and caring Father Who provides for all our needs. The more I see nature documentaries and the older I get I marvel at the depth of God’s mind to produce such variety in His creation. As a result all this should leave us in awe of God and want to love and respect Him. All that I have said is just touching the tip of the iceberg for the reason for us loving God. I think the greatest reason for loving God is His love and mercy for us sinful creatures. He showered us with all His love and we rejected His love. He was not spiteful. Knowing how ungratefully we would treat Him He planned for all eternity for His Son to become one like us. Now that is love, God becoming man. Not only did the Son become man, but He suffered and died the most cruel of deaths to restore us to His Father’s love. He goes further. Through the Eucharist He leaves Himself with us forever. You can walk into any Catholic Church and enjoy His presence. Again God does not stop there. When His Son returned to Heaven the Father and His Son sent us the Holy Spirit to be our Friend, Comforter and Counsellor. He would never leave us.

How is it possible that we should not love such a caring, loving and thoughtful God? It makes us wonder how some people can deny His existence and love for us. It is true that He tests our love for Him. He allows, not wills, evil to surround us and sometimes devastate our lives, things like tsunami, hurricans, earthquakes and fires. These things are the result of the wiles of either Satan or the sins of man. All that He has created is good. It was our sins that damaged His world. Amidst all these disasters He has given us all the help to overcome or live through them. We have His Son in the Holy Eucharist and His Spirit who lives within us. Our daily prayer should be, “Increase my love for You more and more. Let me never do anything to offend such goodness and caring.”

Jesus tells us that the second Commandment is that we “love our neighbour as ourselves.” The reason is obvious. If God is our Father and we are all His children, that makes us brothers and sisters and it should be natural for brothers and sisters to love one another. We must note that Jesus did not say we must like our neighbour, but love our neighbour. There is the world of difference between the two. Even Jesus did not like everyone. He never liked the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, self-righteousness and treatment of people, but He loved them and died for them. We have to follow His example. There are people who are rude and abrasive. It seems that they go out of their way to make life difficult for us. They lie and cheat and may cause us to lose our jobs. They even burn down our homes and kill our loved ones. Like Jesus we must love these people. The Commandment says we must love them as we love ourselves. How do we love ourselves? We care for ourselves and we would never allow any harm to come to ourselves. That is how we have to treat them.

But Jesus teaches us to go further when He says, “A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you.” Now it is not just ‘loving our neighbour as ourself’ but ‘as I have loved you.’ Jesus is raising the standard of our love to a much higher level. How did Jesus love? He loved His enemies. As they put Him to death He prayed, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’ St. Peter tells us that when He was insulted He did not return insult. That is how we must love our neighbour who is an enemy to us. We must pray for them and not repay insult for insult. We must want their highest good as Jesus wanted for His enemies.

Lord Jesus, increase my love for You and my neighbour more and more.