St. John the Evangelist

When the scholar of the law who wanted to trap Jesus posed the question: which of the commandment of the Law was the greatest, he was unprepared for the answer that Jesus would give him; “Love God with your whole mind, your whole heart, and your whole soul, and love your neighbor as yourself”. We realize that love for God and love for neighbor are quite inseparable. Love of God is impossible without love of neighbor. But there are a few questions requiring answers if we have to fulfill this command. How does one love God? Who is my neighbor? How does one show love to one’s neighbor?

There are many in our world today who equate love for God with appeasement of God. Like the Jewish people, these individuals will offer prayers and sacrifices to God through fasting; they will spend time in Adoration, attend Masses both during the week and on the weekends, they will approach the Sacraments frequently and observe all the norms of religion by adhering to the teachings of the Church. This way these individuals believe they have satisfied God, or should I say they have appeased God. Yet when you watch closely you notice how they are so selfish, unkind and mean in their dealings with other individuals. They are ready to push others out of the way in order to have whatever they want. You can see that the love of God must go beyond fulfilling a list of things; there must be an accompanying attitude. Where there is no love of neighbor, there is no love of God.

Who is the neighbor whom I must love as I love God? My neighbor includes the people next door but it also includes my own family and all the people with whom I am acquainted. Christ’s definition of neighbor includes our enemies, our opponents, and our rivals. My neighbor includes the unborn, the elderly in the homes and those with severe learning difficulties. Christ also includes those who are very hard to love. The neighbor also includes those we have not met and do not know. Christianity includes as our neighbors, people at the furthest corner of the globe, people from our inner cities, people whose culture and way of life are quite different from ours. It also includes the prisoner, the drug addict, the homosexual, the homeless, the criminal, the disabled, and the mentally ill; indeed all who are marginalized in any way whatever should be considered as our neighbors too.

We must show love to all these group of persons if we want to satisfy the requirement of the law of love as enunciated by Christ. And this is why Jesus taught in Matthew 25:40 “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me”. It is easy to love God—he is up there in his heaven and doesn’t seem to bother us too much. We can formulate an idea of him and love that. It presents us with few difficulties. But it is much harder to love a person than an idea. Much harder to love is a person who fails to meet up with our expectations, one who challenges our assumptions and one whose ugliness is more than skin deep.

But then we have to show that our love is more than skin deep. A journalist visiting Africa watched an attractive young nun dressing the wounds on a man with gangrene in his leg. The journalist was appalled by the wound but was full of admiration for the young nun who seemed to show no disgust as she was cleaning the ugly wound. ‘I wouldn’t do that for £1,000.’ said the journalist. ‘Neither would I,’ said the nun, ‘I do it for love.’ However we have to be wary of ending up like some social workers. These are individuals who seldom go near a church. For them life is about helping people to develop themselves. Such people can be often very generous, and make all kinds of sacrifice to help others. But there is little or no prayers in their lives, little time for God. They need to find the balance.

The error of the scholar of the Law is still here with us. There are still many Christians who try to separate love of fellow human beings from love of God. Their commitment to faith does not include commitment to human rights and to justice and peace issues. We shall do well to heed the message of Jesus in today's gospel: that true love of God and true love of neighbor are two sides of the same coin. Any attempt to separate them is a falsification of the message of Christ. "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must love his brother/sister" (1 John 4:20-21).