Friday Gospel Recharge
A Reflection on Matthew 22: 34-40
(20th Friday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)
Living our best by loving God and Neighbour as ourselves
In this
Gospel, Jesus teaches us two very important aspects of how to be properly human
beings. The first of his teachings is that we ought to be absorbed in loving
God above every creature with our mind, body and soul. After this commandment,
Jesus then instructs us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. If we do
these two things, we are then on the straight and narrow path to live the
proper human life.
If you are questioning why Jesus informs us to prioritise the love of God with our total existence as the first principle of life, we should first ponder who is God in relation to us. According to Catholic doctrine, God, whose nature is love, is the creator of all that is confined in space and time, and he created all that there is for us out of love. Because God loves us, and gave us a share in his existence out of his own love, we should return this love that God has for us.
Naturally, we came into the world through the marital act which our parents had joined themselves in however by the grace of God, he allowed for human life to be created through that act which made us. Through the martial act, our parents became co-creators with God, which is love.
How can one show this kind of love towards God? As reflected in Jesus’s example, we ought to be obedient to the will of the Father. Jesus did this by dying for us on the cross. We can emulate this act by observing the law he has written in our own hearts, the Ten Commandments. When observed, we mirror Jesus in our behaviour and attitudes; though we do not make a literal sacrifice with our own life with the shedding of our blood, nevertheless we sacrifice and deny ourselves the temptation of the flesh which constantly wants to rebel against God. Other than observing this law, we can enter into a loving relationship with God through prayer, making that relationship with him a personal and intimate one.
Prayer which makes our relationship personal gives real meaning to how we think speak and act in the world. We consider our actions and ask ourselves in prayer with God if I do this or that, who will be affected by them? While we naturally hurt others with our poor choices - and some of these include cheating our friends and spouses, fornication, stealing, murdering to name a few - we also offend God too by those behaviours because we hurt the ones who God also loves, who happen to be our friends, family, and other colleagues. We offend God when we fail to love ourselves in a healthy manner, which is observed once again in keeping of the law.
Now, Jesus says the second command is like the first: our love for others should be the same love we have for ourselves. This is an important commandment to reflect on. Jesus wants us to share a part of our existence with others, wanting them to have the same quality of life that we would wish for our own selves. In some way this is the same love God has loved us with. When God loves us he does not love us with a love that is separable from himself but of the same love that he has for himself. God knows how to love himself properly and with this proper love he has, he gives to us unconditionally.
It might help to reflect on Jesus’s own sacrifice and how that act resembles his command to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus who is God has for himself the beatific vision, meaning that contained in his own person he shares the triune divine life. This life from Jesus’s point of view is awesome and much more. He sees himself happy and content in God. He wants us to be happy and content too in God. So that we might be happy and content some day with him, he died for us to make this future reality possible. In other words, with the command to love our neighbour as ourselves, Jesus invites us to put into practice how it is to love others the way God loves us. God in the person of Jesus wants us to experience his love for us and we experience this by loving him first completely. From there, once we discover his unconditional love and are affected by it, we should learn that we are made not just for but also to love unconditionally. God in his commandment to love others as ourselves is a call consider laying down our own lives for others so that they might find life in God.
Today, in our Catholic culture, there seems to be an over emphasis on an horizontal love while neglecting our vertical obligation to love. By horizontal I mean man’s love for man, and by vertical man’s love for God. It is good that our brothers and sisters of the Catholic ilk are out there advocating and seeking the basic needs and more for our downtrodden and neglected neighbour, however, when we neglect a healthy love for God, our love for neighbour is seriously diminished. You see, Gods love is unconditional. To experience this kind of love requires our constant attention on God. When we experience this love of God, we are able by God’s grace to make our love unconditional towards others. We give more than what we can or want to give that justice demands; in extension of justice, we show our neighbour mercy. This kind of attitude we read in Jesus’s parable on the workers in the vineyard, where the vineyard owner pays each of his labourers, whether they worked half a day or an hour, they got the same pay. While half a day’s work warrants half a day’s pay and an hours work an hours pay, God is reckless in his giving, providing more than what justice deserves. God not only gives us the grace to love as he loves, but coming to know and experience God and place our trust in him, our faith informs us this is the only kind of love that warrants a gold star.
Too often we make a fuss about people whose needs have been forgotten, and forget to put God in the equation in their neglect. God motivates us to love others since it is he who wants a just world and for people to flourish. This aspect of love is seriously overlooked and it’s most likely because of secular inculturation of every sphere of society.
God gave us these two commandments not for the sake of the law itself but so that we can truly discover who God is and what we were made for. We were made to love God and others and find life in a relationship genuine in love. Ultimately, Jesus gave us this commandment so that through knowing, loving and serving God in this life we can be happy with him in a beatific way, someday, in heaven. As Catholics who are hard bent on justice, we should love God first and learn to love others as God loves us so that our society will have life and more at the heart of its values rather than so much an ideology separated from love.
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