Mark 12:28 – 34
There was a rabbi named Hillel who
lived about the same time as Jesus. He taught in the temple of
Jerusalem and is still highly regarded as an authority on the Jewish
religion. The story goes that someone approached him and dared him
to say the whole Jewish law while standing on one foot. Hillel took
up the challenge and replied, “Do not do to someone else what you
would not have done to you. That is the whole law. Now go and study
it.” The Budda, Confucius, Lao Tse, and many other great religious
leaders had this insight as well. So what is so special about the
Jesus’ statement? After all, he simply puts the great command of
Deuteronomy together with another commandment in Leviticus. The
scribe who asked which commandment is the greatest gets back two
commandments, it seems. And since Jesus says that these two
commandments are the greatest, it is worth thinking about them.
One way to begin is at the end of the
passage. It’s a good thing to love yourself. There are plenty of
people who don’t – people who have unhealthy relationships with
food, with alcohol, with tobacco, with drugs. People who ride
motorcycles without helmets; people who juggle chain saws. And there
are people that harm themselves because of depression or sometimes, a
severe personality disorder. We are supposed to love ourselves. How
do we do that? Well, in addition to avoiding damage to our selves,
we love our bodies by trying to keep them healthy. We make it a
point to learn about what foods to eat and what to avoid. If we love
our minds, we are concerned about what we put into them.
Pornography, hours of video gaming, Binge watching television,
mindlessly surfing the internet are all ways to abuse our minds. And
if we love our souls, we are concerned not only about sin but about
things that bring us close to sin, and when we sin we get to the
Sacrament of Penance as soon as we can. Love for oneself is not just
a warm feeling.
Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as
yourself”. In Luke’s gospel, this leads into the story of the
good Samaritan. But we’ve just considered how we love ourselves,
and that is how we love our neighbor. We do what we can so that they
will have healthy bodies, healthy minds, and God willing, eternal
happiness in heaven. The Church believes in the principle of
subsidiarity. This means for our purposes that our love should
translate into action especially with members of our family, our
close friends; and then those we associate with at work, and so on.
Perhaps the neighbor in Pakistan might be touched by a few dollars
given to a charity. But those for whom we are most responsible are
the ones for whom we should be making the most effort.
And finally, we work our way back to
the first of the two great commandments. If we have loved ourselves,
and loved our neighbor, we will have seen glimpses of God. We see
God in the beauty of nature and in the marvelous achievements of arts
and science. But we especially see God in other people; they are
made in the image and likeness of God. Loving God with all our
hearts has to do with wanting to be close to God, to enter into a
deep relationship with Him. This is not something that just happens.
Loving God with our whole souls has to
do with our wanting to do what God wants us to do, precisely because
we want to have a relationship with Him. My soul is the part of me
that sets goals, that places value on things, that decides where I
will put my energy. Loving with my soul means that I will make it a
priority to do what I understand He wants me to do.
Loving God with our whole minds means
that we want to learn all we can about his nature, his laws, his
actions in history. Sincere Jewish people consider the study of the
Law as the highest pursuit of the intellect. We Catholics have a
rich intellectual heritage as well, that too few of us know about. I
wish every Catholic would make it a point to spend a few minutes
every day reading some good spiritual literature. The more we know
about God, the more we love Him.
Loving God with our whole strength
means that we use what he has given us to serve him. If we see one
of his children in need of something, we give it. If we come across
someone who is on a bad path, we gently offer correction. We use our
powers to carry out what we have learned about God.
And we find that the two great
commandments are really one. Because loving God with our whole
heart, soul, mind and strength is really the greatest way we can love
ourselves, because that is what we are made for. And in loving God
with our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths leads us naturally and
inevitably to loving our neighbor.
Jesus is different from the various
religious leaders down through the ages who have given voice to
different formulations of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule, love
your neighbor as yourself, is empty and anemic without loving God
with our whole hearts, souls, minds and strengths.
The two great commandments are really
tied together, and if we set out to obey them we will be doing what
we were meant to do, and that will lead us to our fulfillment as
human beings.
So look around you for glimpses of God
in yourself, in your neighbor, in beauty, in truth, in goodness.
Don’t stop there; there is Someone behind all of this who invites
you into a relationship, greater than any friendship, greater than
any lover. Find out what He wants and make it your priority to do
it. And study; the more you know about this God, this Lover of your
soul, the more you will love Him. And carry out what you learn from
your studying. Love is not just a warm feeling. Love is a plan of
life, and as Jesus told us, “Where your treasure is, there your
heart shall be.”
