May Jesus Christ be praised and may his holy Mother pray for
us.
Today the command of the Lord Jesus in the reading from the
Gospel is quite simple. The many and
varied commandments of the law that were given in the Old Testament are
summarized by the Lord Jesus into only two commandments. They are quite simple, and yet they are very,
very difficult.
It was a common practice in the time of Jesus for scholars of
the law to discuss the most important commandments, and then to propose a brief
summary for those who followed them.
There are, in the Old Testament, six hundred and thirteen commandments,
not only ten, so such a summary was very useful. When one of the scribes approached the Lord
Jesus he was seeking the opinion of the Lord about the most important
commandment. From six hundred and
thirteen commandments, the Lord Jesus proclaims only two. And from the many words contained in those
two commandments, one word summarizes them both: love.
The command of the Lord Jesus is simple. You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole message of the Sacred Scriptures
and the message of our faith focus on these two relationships. We are invited to respond to the love that
God has shown to us with every part of our being. We give to God the gift of our hearts and we
offer all of our affections. We give to
God the gift of our souls and we offer our present and our future. We give to God the gift of our minds and we
offer every thought and ability for his glory.
We give to God the gift of our strength and we offer every work of our
hands to build up his kingdom. Our
response to the invitation of the Lord is to be complete. The invitation of the Lord is quite simple,
the Lord has asked for everything.
When we consider the love of our neighbor, there is something
more challenging to consider. It is not
the question about the identity of our neighbor. It is not even the question about what we owe
to our neighbors. What we must consider
when we ponder the commandment of the Lord to love our neighbors as ourselves,
is whether or not we indeed actually love ourselves.
The commandment to love God and love our neighbor presumes that we love ourselves. It is not the kind of love of self that is
self-centered, egotistical and exclusive. Those kinds of love are spiritual
weeds that we do well to root from the garden of our souls. That would be love turned inward. We love ourselves not because we are
captivated by our goodness and virtues, but because God Almighty loves us as
the pinnacle of creation, his very own image and likeness. This is not a love that we earned. It is not a love that we could earn. And it’s not a love that we can lose. God will not stop loving us. It is a love, however, that we can
reject. We can by our choices and
responses choose to live outside of love.
We can choose to reject the gift of love that the Father has offered to
us. But God, for his part, has chosen to
love us, and created in freedom and love, we can choose to accept the gift of
his love.
It is, dear brothers and
sisters, a most difficult gift for us to accept. It is a gift too great and too good for us to
imagine. In the eternal love of the
Eternal Father, we have been created in love and declared worthy of being
loved. The love that God has for us and
the love that God shows to us come before any commandment that God gives to
us. Let us live in his love, and respond
to his love, and share in his love. It
really is quite simple. Amen.
Preached at Our Lady of Lourdes
Catholic Church, Monroe, NC
