Love Neighbor as Self

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 28 & 29, 2023

Ex 22:20-26 Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51 1 Thes 1:5c-10 Jn 14:23 Mt 22:34-40

“Love, love, love, love. Christians, this is your call. Love your neighbor as yourself, for God loves us all.”

Not sure how many of you recognized that hymn. It’s called the “Love Round.” It was a popular campfire hymn we use to sing back a few years ago when I was in high school. This hymn came to mind as I was reflecting on today’s Gospel reading because it is based on the second of the two great commandments mentioned by Jesus. However, the hymn includes the words “for God loves us all,” which is not in our Gospel passage, but very relevant to the overall message and theme.

Now before we look into this theme of love in today’s reading, let’s first go back to last week’s Gospel about paying taxes. Not sure if you noticed that when Jesus responded to the Pharisees’ question with “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,” there was no mention of who or what had the image or inscription of God, only that the Roman coin had the image and inscription of Caesar. Why? Well because any good Pharisee, or any good Jew for that matter, would know that Sacred Scripture explicitly says that man was made in God’s image and likeness, and that He would write His law of love in their hearts and inscribe it on their minds.

But what should have been a simple precept of having God’s law written in our hearts and inscribed in our minds, became very complicated. In fact, the Jews of Jesus' time were very legalistic and stressed observance of 613 precepts of the Mosaic law which covered every detail of their daily lives. And so, when the Pharisee in today’s Gospel reading askes Jesus which commandment in the law is the greatest, he was not asking about which of the 10 commandments given to them by Moses on Mount Sinai was the greatest, but which of the 613 precepts of the Mosaic law.

Of course, Jesus’s response is brilliantly crafted as he summarizes all 613 precepts into what appear to be two intertwined commands that point back to the two tablets of the 10 commandments. From Deuteronomy 6:5, love of God, which speaks to the first tablet and the three commandments about our relationship with God; and from Leviticus 19:18, love of neighbor, which speaks to the second tablet and the seven commandments about our relationship with our neighbor.

However, if we pay close attention, there is a hidden third command, and that is love of self. That is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We cannot love our neighbor if we don’t know how to love ourselves. And just what is this love of self? Well, it emanates from the love that God has for us when He created us in His image and likeness and inscribed in us His law of love. It is a love that wants us, through our free will, to choose to spend all eternity with him. And as it was beautifully taught in the Baltimore Catechism, we were made to know, love, and serve God in this life, so that we may be with Him in the next.

Unfortunately, we have taken the word Love and muddied it up with ideologies, concepts, and phrases that do not speak to the truth of what love is. Such phrases like…

“True loves first kiss,” which is romantic fantasy, a fairytale love that is unrealistic.

“Puppy love,” which is an adolescent romantic love that is an infatuation that eventually goes away.

“Pizza love,” which is an expression we used in youth ministry that simply means we like something a lot, and directed to an object that can neither receive our love nor reciprocate it.

And “love is love,” which is a phrase that was heavily used in social media some years ago in support of letting individuals be in relationships with each other outside of the Sacrament of Marriage.

So, if these are not true expressions of love, then what is? Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that “to love is to will the good of the other.” Therefore, the good that I should “will” for my neighbor should be the good that I “will” for myself, which is the good that God “wills” for me. Again, from the Baltimore Catechism, that they would know, love, and serve God in this life, so they may be with Him in the next.

And as Archbishop Stankevičs recently shared at the Synod on Synodality, “if someone is living in sin, we cannot tell them that’s all right.” “We welcome with love and respect, but true love cannot be separated from the truth, it is no longer love.” “Jesus says we must love our neighbor… to love in truth… and not love that allows everything.”

That’s exactly the love expressed and showed by Jesus to those He encountered. To the woman at the well, without condemning her, called her out and told her she has had five husbands, and the man she was with now, is not her husband. To the woman caught in adultery, after asking her “who was left to condemn her?”, and she replies “no one;” He says to her “neither do I, now go and sin no more.”

With that I leave you with something I wrote back in 2015 called “My Love for You.”

My Love for You

God created us out of love, and for love we are made. But the world today does not know what true love is. Instead, the world has chosen a lesser love, a selfish instead selfless love, a prideful instead of humble love, a resentful instead of forgiving love, a subjective instead of objective love, a conditional instead of unconditional love.

Love is love is not love if it is not the love that truly emanates from the Father's love. A love which seeks out and wants the best for the very person the love is intended for. A love that is willing to die so that one might have life. Love is not about giving in to what people want from me, but about my giving in to giving completely what people need from me to help them attain everlasting life.

If I truly unconditionally love someone, then I want for that person to be able to enter into eternal life with the giver of all life. And all I do should reflect this love.

If you are reading this, this is the love I have for you.