Today’s gospel is a familiar one. When asked what commandment in the law is the greatest Jesus says, ““You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.*”
Those listening would have been familiar with both of these commandments in their Scriptures but in different books. What Jesus does here is to link them and make the two inseparable. We cannot truly love God and at the same time not love our neighbor. By loving we come to realize ourselves as a participant in the Great Love and see everyone and everything a part.
I am not sure when I came to this “knowing.” My guess is that it had something to do with how I felt when someone loved me for who I was and not who they wanted me to be. Or when I truly listened to another. Or when I reached beyond comfort or fear into another’s world to see with their eyes. Perhaps it was when I thought I could love no more, but something in me did. Or when I see or experience how out of situations of great pain and suffering, compassion is so often born and inconceivable generosity and kindness extended.
Though life is and will remain for me a great mystery, I trust that love is the great call on our lives – what we are made of, what we are created for, what is Eternal.
For reflection:
- How is your life defined by love?
- Have you ever been changed by another’s love? By loving another?
- Who is the neighbor in need of your love?
–Trish Stefanik, Overlook Retreat House at Dayspring
