This is a question that rabbis and scribes of the day were regularly debating, and there was no easy answer. The Law contained a total of 613 commandments: 365 prohibitions (one for each day of the year); and 268 prescriptions (one for each bone in the body).
Almost whatever commandment Jesus selected for priority, there could easily have been an opening for debate – and worse He could have been accused of trying to annul some part of the Law by overlooking it.
But Jesus characteristically silences His enemies. He does not single out a particular Law as the most important, rather He goes to the very heart and soul of Israelite faith and gives the principle that is the foundation for the entire religious tradition of the Law and the Prophets.
His answer contains two parts. First, He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, which is the Shema, the most important prayer in all of Judaism – the prayer that every faithful Jew says daily, and which is literally wrapped around their arms and forehead at prayer: “Hear O Israel the Lord your God is God alone. You shall love your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
Jesus then goes above and beyond. He gives his accusers a second commandment that flows from the first. This time he quotes Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Let’s take a closer look at these two commandments that Jesus tells us are the foundation of the entire Law.
The first thing for us to note is that the two laws are interrelated but not identical.
The first commandment is to love God with our whole heart, soul and mind. But it is sometimes hard to say whether we love God or not: unlike other people, whom we can see and touch, God is not tangible in quite the same way. We can be tempted, therefore, to rush past this first commandment and focus entirely on the second.
It’s certainly true that we can love God by loving others – and so it’s no surprise that Jesus immediately adds the second commandment which He says “is like the first.” In fact, later in Christian Scripture St. John (1 John 4:20) goes so far as to say: “those who say ‘I love God’ and hate their neighbor are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
But still, these two commandments are not merely conflated into one for a very good reason. “Loving God is far more than a matter of joining a voluntary organization dedicated to good causes” (George Weigel). There are many people who strive to love their neighbor who claim that there is no God at all!
God must be the most important person in our life, and our love of God must affect every single aspect of our lives. Loving God with our “whole heart, soul and mind” means that we must give over our entire selves to Him – our faith must be “a complete engagement of our entire person, and not just a superficial allegiance” (Sr. Diane Bergant).
This life-altering love of God begins when we strive to develop a personal relationship with God through prayer and the Sacraments. Though God is not tangible to us in the same way the person sitting next to us is, He is not entirely a mystery either. God has revealed Himself in a human face: Jesus His Son, who continues to live in the life of the Church and Her Sacraments.
For the Christian, to know and to love God is to encounter Him in His Church. It is to experience deeply the creating and sustaining love that God has for us, and in return to give God the praise and worship He is due.
Do we cultivate our love of God by practicing daily prayer and by frequently receiving the Sacraments? Do we allow God to be the center of our entire lives, or just of one hour on a Sunday morning? Do we honor God’s Holy Name, or do we use it in vain? Do we speak to others about God or do we let opportunities to evangelize pass us by in silence?
The second commandment Jesus gives his accusers flows directly from this experience of God’s love. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves because we have been loved by God first, and to be like Him, and to love Him in return, is to love what He loves.
Our first reading from the Book of Exodus echoes this second greatest commandment. Moses is instructing the people about how their covenant with God must impact their lives. They themselves have experienced God’s loving mercy: when they were in slavery in Egypt God heard their cry, brought them out of bondage, fed them in the desert and made them a people all His own.
Now, in return, their thoughts and actions must reflect to others what God has done for them: they must care for the alien, the widow and the orphan. In other words, just as they were defenseless slaves in a foreign land, they must now care for the most vulnerable, defenseless and disadvantaged in their society. Moses makes clear that God is listening to those in need, and the punishment for ignoring their cries will be severe.
What about us? Do we hear the cries of the alien, the widow and the orphan? How does our society care for the most vulnerable among us? Do you and I adequately hear and answer the cries of the immigrant, the refugee, the sex worker, the AIDS baby, the single mother, the unborn child, the physically and mentally handicapped, the victims of sexual abuse or domestic violence?
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it this way: “Do we know our neighbor, the poor of our own area? It is so easy for us to talk and talk about the poor of other places. Very often we have the suffering, the lonely, the unwanted, and they are near us and we don’t even know them. We have no time even to smile at them.”
Friends, we have our Lord’s assurance that He hears the cries of these lowly ones and when we ignore their needs we are really ignoring His. It’s essential that we remember this always and constantly strive to improve our care of the neediest among us.
Still, we have reason to rejoice in the good work God is already bringing about through us. The life of charity that the Church has always strived to live is rightfully a source of pride and hope for us.
In our second reading from the Letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul is overjoyed that the Thessalonians are living the Gospel so well that they have become models for all believers. They had seen the manner of St. Paul’s living when he was among them and now that they are imitating him, their discipleship is having the same effect on others: their good reputation has spread throughout Macedonia and more and more people are receiving faith and following the Gospel because of them.
Brothers and sisters, when we follow the example of all the saints and love God, and our neighbor as ourselves, then the word of the Lord sounds forth from us as well. Our children, our neighbors, our coworkers, indeed everyone we meet and everyone who hears of us, is invited to have the same faith, hope, and love that marks our lives.
As we receive the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Love, may we be filled with a sense of urgency to spread the love we have received to our brothers and sisters, thereby ensuring that the “Eucharist becomes in our lives, what it signifies here in our celebration” (Sacramentum Caritatis, 89).
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