Dt 6:2-6; Ps 18; Heb 7:23-28; Mk 12:28b-34
COMMENTARY
The Mission of Love
After the Missionary Month, in which we resumed the path of “ordinary” reflection on the Gospel of each Sunday, we heard today a very important passage in which Jesus solemnly affirms that love is the foundation of life with God. This principle of love is also revealed as the basis of the mission which Jesus fulfills as “God’s envoy” and which He will later entrust to His disciples. We are now invited by the Word of God to deepen this dimension of love in our lives as believers, also with the help of the teaching of the Pope, who just a few days ago, with the publication of the Encyclical Letter “Dilexit nos” On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, offered us a precious opportunity to reflect on the importance of love.
1. “Dilexit nos”. God Loved Us, First
In response to the question “Which is the first of all the commandments?”, Jesus offered a reference to the renowned text in the Book of Deuteronomy (which was presented in the first reading). This is the fundamental text of the Jewish tradition, which becomes the Creed for every Jew who recites it every day in his or her morning prayer. The passage that Jesus cited in response to the first commandment underscores the imperative for all believers to prioritize the love of God above all else, “with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength”. Nevertheless, even prior to issuing a command, the text initiates with an exhortation to listen attentively and express gratitude to God, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!” This is similar to the opening of the Decalogue, God’s list of Ten Commandments for the Israelites: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Dt 5:6). Prior to requesting that the people adhere to His teachings, particularly His commandment to love Him, God invites Israel to recognize Him as that One God and Lord who liberated them form their bondage in Egypt, and saved them by and in love. (cf. Dt 7:7-8,9,11: “It was not because you are more numerous than all the peoples that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you; for you are really the smallest of all peoples. […] Know, then, that the LORD, your God, is God […]. Therefore carefully observe the commandment, the statutes and the ordinances which I command you today”).
Here is the reason why God asks us, His children, to love Him, and why Christ reiterated this with authority. From this perspective, the commandment to love God is initiated by the act of acknowledging the numerous benefits He has bestowed upon us despite our unworthiness. God demonstrated His love for us initially and in a tangible manner through Christ Jesus, who, in love, offered His own life to bestow upon us the new life in God, as the Pope emphasized from the outset of the Encyclical Dilexit nos.
2. What does it mean to love God, and how do you do it?
The fundamental commandment to love God begins with the invitation to first recognize God’s love, to enter the orbit of love and understand and practice what God really means. It is worth noting that loving is a delicate matter. It is not something that can be commanded or forced, as the Vietnamese proverbial saying goes, “Ep dau ep mo, ai no ep duyen” (One can squeeze the oil and fat, who dares to ever squeeze [force] the marriage of love). How then, can we love God? There are three important points to consider in this regard.
Firstly, in order to adhere to the commandment to love God, it is necessary to embark upon a path that is based upon concrete steps, commencing with an attitude of constant gratitude for the blessings that are bestowed upon us by God. From this gratitude arises the desire to love God, the source of all good, and this is already an expression of love for God. This concept is elucidated by St. Augustine, who states that anyone who desires to love God already loves him.
Secondly, as the Word of God itself makes explicit:
Now, therefore, Israel, what does the LORD, your God, ask of you but to fear the LORD, your God, to follow in all his ways, to love and serve the LORD, your God, with your whole heart and with your whole being, to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD that I am commanding you today for your own well-being? (Dt 10:12-13)
Loving God is inextricably linked with reverence, which encompasses respecting and honoring Him, serving Him, and upholding His commands, which represent His will for our benefit.
Furthermore, St. Francis of Assisi elucidates the tangible actions to be taken to demonstrate love for God. In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, the saint states:
Your will be done on earth as in heaven: That we may love You with our whole heart by always thinking of You, with our whole soul by always desiring You, with our whole mind by always directing all our intentions to You, and by seeking Your glory in everything with all our whole strength by exerting all our energies and affections of body and soul in the service of Your love and of nothing else.
In this way, St. Francis provided clear and detailed instructions on how we should love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. This entails a constant contemplation of God, an aspiration towards Him, the orientation of one’s intentions towards Him, and the allocation of all available resources in the service of God alone. Some readers may perceive such radical and arguably impractical directives for those of us who are mortal sinners, who unfortunately have to engage in other activities in life. However, this teaching of the saint of Assisi establishes a path towards that love for God to which we are all called.
3. What does it mean to love your neighbor?
The aforementioned commentary by St. Francis of Assisi about the love we must have for God continues with his explanation of love for neighbor as an expression of God’s own will for our lives. From here we can glimpse an important but little-mentioned aspect in the love we must have for our neighbors. The saint writes:
Your will be done on earth as in heaven: That we may love You […]; and we may love our neighbour as ourselves by drawing them all to Your love with our whole strength, by rejoicing in the good of others as in our own by suffering with others at their misfortunes, and by giving offence to no one.
We are fortunate to have the wisdom of the saints to guide us in our pursuit of true love for our neighbors, which Jesus recommended as an intrinsic connection with love for God. Above all, loving our neighbor means “drawing” everyone toward the love of God. Of course, such love for one’s neighbor involves helping the one in need, doing good to him / her, and “giving no offense to anyone.” Nevertheless, the essence of concrete love of neighbor remains our helping everyone so that they can find and rediscover the love of God that surpasses everything in life.
In conclusion, today’s Gospel passage offers us a helpful reminder of God’s will for each of us. It may be said that God’s intention for humanity is to love God with one’s whole being and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. In other words, as St. Francis suggests, it could be said that God’s will for us is always and everywhere to love Him and others, regardless of age, state of life, vocation, or profession.
This suggests that we should endeavour to encourage everyone to embrace God’s love. This is the mission of love that Christ accomplished and passed on to His disciples, who were sent throughout the world. Perhaps it would be beneficial for each of us to reflect on whether we feel an inner calling to spread God’s and Christ’s love to others and guide them towards Him. May God give us the strength to live in love and for love.
Useful points to consider:
Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ,Dilexit Nos
207. The flames of love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus also expand through the Church’s missionary outreach, which proclaims the message of God’s love revealed in Christ. Saint Vincent de Paul put this nicely when he invited his disciples to pray to the Lord for “this spirit, this heart that causes us to go everywhere, this heart of the Son of God, the heart of our Lord, that disposes us to go as he went… he sends us, like [the apostles], to bring fire everywhere”.
208. Saint Paul VI, addressing religious Congregations dedicated to the spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart, made the following observation. “There can be no doubt that pastoral commitment and missionary zeal will fan into flame, if priests and laity alike, in their desire to spread the glory of God, contemplate the example of eternal love that Christ has shown us, and direct their efforts to make all men and women sharers in the unfathomable riches of Christ”. As we contemplate the Sacred Heart, mission becomes a matter of love. For the greatest danger in mission is that, amid all the things we say and do, we fail to bring about a joyful encounter with the love of Christ who embraces us and saves us.
209. Mission, as a radiation of the love of the heart of Christ, requires missionaries who are themselves in love and who, enthralled by Christ, feel bound to share this love that has changed their lives. They are impatient when time is wasted discussing secondary questions or concentrating on truths and rules, because their greatest concern is to share what they have experienced. They want others to perceive the goodness and beauty of the Beloved through their efforts, however inadequate they may be
Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter to the Bishops Priests and Deacons Men and Women Religious and All the Lay Faithful on Christian Love,Deus Caritas Est
1. […] In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might” (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us. […]
9. […] The history of the love-relationship between God and Israel consists, at the deepest level, in the fact that he gives her the Torah, thereby opening Israel’s eyes to man’s true nature and showing her the path leading to true humanism. It consists in the fact that man, through a life of fidelity to the one God, comes to experience himself as loved by God, and discovers joy in truth and in righteousness—a joy in God which becomes his essential happiness: “Whom do I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you … for me it is good to be near God” (Ps 73 [72]:25, 28). […]
16. […] Can we love God without seeing him? And can love be commanded? Against the double commandment of love these questions raise a double objection. No one has ever seen God, so how could we love him? Moreover, love cannot be commanded; it is ultimately a feeling that is either there or not, nor can it be produced by the will. Scripture seems to reinforce the first objection when it states: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). But this text hardly excludes the love of God as something impossible. On the contrary, the whole context of the passage quoted from the First Letter of John shows that such love is explicitly demanded. The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbour is emphasized. One is so closely connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbour or hate him altogether. Saint John’s words should rather be interpreted to mean that love of neighbour is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbour also blinds us to God.
17. […] In the Church’s Liturgy, in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us. […]
18. […] If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. […] Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
