In the last couple of weeks we have had stories in which Jesus stressed the importance of taking God seriously. Two weeks ago, we got the story of the wedding feast, and the lesson was we should not accept God’s gift casually. Last week, we heard that Caesar gets his due taxes, but it’s more important to give God his due worship. These past two weeks we have been focusing on What. Today, we focus on How. This week we get the answer to the next question, “How do I take it seriously? How should I behave?”
The scholar of the law is asking the question without sincerity; he just wants to test Jesus. But it is a good question, and it’s a question good Catholics should ask. What should I do, Lord, so that you know I claim you? What should I do, Lord, so that you welcome me home at the end of my life?
The answer Jesus gives is very simple, but it’s very difficult. The 600 rules that the scholar of the law has studied will not be the way to Heaven. There are just two big rules: We must love the Lord our God with everything that we have and everything we are: our soul, our strength, our minds, and our very hearts. And we must love our neighbor the way we want to be loved.
As I said, this is simple, but it is not easy. That’s why we always have follow-up questions. The simple instruction is too big for us, so we need it broken down into bite-sized pieces. The Israelites had the Mosaic Law for the same reason: remember that Moses was transfigured when he came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments, and the people freaked out. They told him to go up the mountain alone to talk to God and then come down and tell them what to do. The Ten Commandments became the 600 laws of the Jewish faith.
We Catholics are not so different. We have the Seven Sacraments and the Five Precepts. We have the 24 Theses, and you can’t take them back. But all these good particular things hang from the two most important things.
Let us take a moment and ponder each of these most important things. What does it mean to love God with your heart, your mind, and your soul? I think it means we must fight the urge to compartmentalize our relationship with our Creator. God is essentially simple; don’t make Him complex. We are complex, with parts and pasts and futures, but He simply is. The mind of the creature cannot fully comprehend the Creator, but the creature can rest in the Creator. We don’t have to understand everything about God to love him completely. Indeed, part of our love for Him is that we do not insist on understanding Him.
If we are to love God with everything we have and everything we are, then we will love him as a young child loves his father. We will trust him and his good intentions for our lives. We will turn to him when we are in trouble. We will run to his loving arms when we have disobeyed him, and we will gratefully accept his corrections and chastisements.
When we don’t hold anything back, we find it much easier to delight in God’s love for us and his activity in our lives. We are still sinners, but we are sinners who are loved by their father. We still have a gap between our plans and our performance, but we know our Father doesn’t judge us as the world does.
We know from the words of Jesus that we are asked to strive for a perfect grade, but we know He knows we can barely manage a passing grade. He gives us the “A” because he loves us. We earn a “C” and then rejoice in the “A” he gives us, and we thank Him for his goodness and generosity. When we love God with all we have, we find we accept his gifts with respect and appreciation.
Going back to the gospel stories, when we love God with all that we have, we render to Caesar only what is due to Caesar, and we give that limited amount because we know everything ultimately came from God and must be returned to Him. When we love God with all that we have, we do recognize the importance of the wedding feast, and we take the time to prepare ourselves appropriately. We live as strangers in a strange land because our love for God has helped us see that we are not of this world but only in this world.
What about our neighbor? They may not only be in this world but completely of it as well. Yet we must love them as we wish to be loved. This second great commandment is second because it flows from the first great commandment. We can only love our neighbor if we love our God. Loving our neighbor is the primary way we demonstrate that we love God.
We struggle with loving our neighbors because our neighbors routinely drive us crazy. They make decisions that affect us. Those decisions often look to be either incredibly stupid or incredibly wicked. We might ask God, “how are we to love someone who is either incompetent or malicious?”
If we really love God with all that we have, then we will not mind his answer. “Look in the mirror.” If I take an honest inventory of myself, I find a sinner. I find someone who is inconsistent in his effort. I find someone who thinks he’s the most capable man in the world when he’s simply another man in the world. I find someone who struggles with proper boundaries: getting involved in other people’s business without an invitation or not getting involved when I am needed by them. If I am honest with myself, I am stumbling toward heaven. I fall frequently, and I seek forgiveness in the confessional for my weakness. I hear from God through the priest, “I love you. Go out and try again.” That’s not judgment. It is encouragement.
That is how I want to be loved. I want to be given some slack when I mess up, and I want to hear some applause when I do well. And that is how God wants me to love my neighbor.
There is no way I can love my neighbor the right way entirely by my own power. So I thank God for the sacraments as a sure way to receive his sanctifying grace and to grow more holy and more like Him. When I’m more like Him, I’m a better lover of my neighbor. When I’m more like Him, I don’t see my neighbor’s faults as clearly, and I see his strengths much more clearly. When I’m more like God, I cut my neighbor a lot of slack when he does something I don’t like.
The first great commandment is to love the Lord our God with our hearts, our minds, and our strength. The second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. All the rules and customs of the Catholic faith are based on these two commandments. All the time we are given on Earth is for us to surrender to these two commandments. Everything we do will be measured by how seriously we took these two commandments. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
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