Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel passage, we are given the Great Commandment and the one that is like it. The Great Commandment is we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. The command that is like this one is to love our neighbor as ourselves. So first comes our love of God, and then comes our love of ourselves and of our neighbor. Jesus makes a very interesting statement at the end of this passage. He says that “the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” What this means is that all of the other commandments, as well as the teachings of the prophets really amount to clarifications of how to go about loving God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and how to love our neighbor as ourselves. They tell how to carry out the first two commandments. And we can see that the heart of all of the commandments is love; love of God first, and then love of neighbor and of self.
When we look at St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13: 9-10, we will notice something interesting. Here St. Paul lists various of the commandments that relate to people, and then says that the commandments can be summed up as, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Nowhere does Paul mention love of God, the first and greatest commandment. This omission can seem puzzling until we read 1 John 4:20 in conjunction with what Paul wrote. Here John tells us that we cannot truly love the God whom we do not see unless we love the brother or sister whom we do see. So, the true measure of our love of God is how well we love our fellow human beings, and in particular, those who are physically present in our lives.
It is easy for us to stir up warm feelings for God and to think that we love Him. But the true measure of our love for God is how well we actually love the people present in our life. This is also one of the main topics of St. Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue with God the Father. The Father tells her throughout that since we human beings cannot do anything for God, God considers the love with which we treat our fellow human beings to be directed toward Him. Likewise, if we are not very loving towards them, this lack of love is considered by God as a lack of love for Him. And so, if you really want to know how well you love God, just consider honestly how well you love your fellow human beings.
Reflection by Fr. Aquinas Keusenkothen, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections