The basic principle Jesus stood for in confrontation with his critics is the ground rule of Judaism and Christianity: the love of God and the love of neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40), an episode retold seven times in our Lectionary. This greatest and most familiar commandment of God needs to be recalled into actual practice if our faith is not to be a caricature.
With all one’s heart
TO love God with all one’s heart and soul and mind (Deuteronomy 6:5) means a constant and complete attention to the beloved. It is a love that is inventive and generous and developmental, not limited to a set of predetermined duties or particular applications. It does not aspire to be eventually free of the beloved nor consider it acceptable to be no longer somehow obligated to the demands of the beloved. Hence specific items entered on a calendar like celebrations and anniversaries are only reminders and longed for opportunities, not debts or bills that must be paid.
As we saw last week, “giving to God what is God’s” means God alone can demand from us, and is worthy of our total and absolute surrender, so that even our rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s falls under the supreme law of God. Since God alone is God, we must love Him with our whole and undivided heart, excluding nothing of oneself from Him and reserving nothing of oneself for somebody else or for something else. In effect we shall worship no other, rejecting any idolatry of money or fame or power. We allow no pretentious Caesar to manipulate us for the sake of national security or economic progress, to steal or murder or lie in violation of God’s law and in exchange for God’s love.
As oneself
Created especially in God’s own image, humankind images and represents God in the world. So, the greatest commandment for humankind is the love whereby our love of God is authenticated by our love for one another as beloved creatures in God’s image and likeness. We are entrusted to each other, so that we can love God in each other. The love we bear God whom we do not see is judged by the manner we act toward other human beings whom we see and must appreciate as bearers of God’s love and image. Indeed, the love of God remains in us and is brought to perfection in us by the love we have for one another (1 John 4:12). Nothing is better than the love testifying to the mystery of God and to His presence in our lives.
Doing anything contrary to our neighbor’s good can never correspond to God’s will and to the love we owe Him. It is the imperative of love to determine what must concretely be done at any given time. A rule of thumb is to ask oneself what would one do or wish to be done for oneself under similar situation, or simply be guided by the golden rule that I would never do to anyone what I would not want anyone to do to me. There is still some risk that we may be mistaken, for we are not always sure what may really be good for us here and now. That is why it is prudent to seek the advice of others more experienced, or to have recourse to such necessary experience as contained in our traditional
values and guidelines.
Alálaong bagá, it is senseless to separate the first commandment from the second, or vice versa. For the love of God is first in the order of precept, while the love of neighbor is first in the order of practice, inasmuch as we do not see God but our neighbor is immediately and perceptively with us in this life. As God’s love for us became incarnate in His Son Jesus Christ who became our loving, saving brother in our midst, we must continue to find that love in the flesh, in our brothers and sisters with whom Jesus has identified Himself. Our love for one another verifies our belonging to Jesus and links us up with God’s eternal reign of love and communion. We ready ourselves to see God in the next by loving our neighbor now.
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