This
Sunday the liturgy allows us to make some differentiations which may strike us
odd at first but which we would find perfectly logical in the end. What’s more
is that these will help us as well as we continue to respond to the call to
holiness which is universal. In the First Reading, taken from the book of
Exodus, the Lord commands Israel to be compassionate to those who are least in
society: the unprotected, the weak, the alien. With respect to the alien the
Lord commands Israel not to oppress nor molest them, reminding them the people
that they too once wandered in a strange land, benefiting from the goodness of
God. They were to be merciful and not turn a deaf ear to the widow and the
orphan, for Israel too was powerless and destitute, and they depended upon the
Lord who provided for them and protected them with mighty hand and outstretched
arm, rescuing them from their enemies. Here Israel is enjoined to be merciful,
as they once had received mercy. The people of God is reminded to do good and
be compassionate, as is proper of a nation whose God is the Lord. This
consideration affects us also, we who in turn have tasted of God’s goodness. We
need to do good to others, be compassionate and kind.
But
the Gospel, building upon this goodness of heart that should be ours, teaches
that for us Christians being good is not enough. In fact, meditating upon the
Gospel for today we would be led to realize that to be merely good and do good
is not Christian enough. In the Gospel Christ, in answer to the question posed
to him by the Pharisees, stressed that the greatest of all of the commandments
is this: “love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your souls and
with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second
is like it: love your neighbor as yourself”. The Lord furthermore mentions that
the Law and the prophets find in these two formulations of the one law its
synthesis. The Christian is called to love, to discover this nucleus of the
Christian message. It is love that perfects the law that says “do good and
avoid evil”, which we see in the first reading. But what does loving consist
in?
This
love is evidently two-fold, as our Lord himself mentioned. The love of God and
the love of neighbor are two sides of the same commandment of love.
Nevertheless, they are not the same. Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of the
greatest Catholic minds of the past century, in his book Trojan Horse in the
City of God, commenting on the errors of the postconciliar era taking place in
aspects of Catholic life and morals, said “the love of neighbor is not the love
of God”. In face value this may seem striking, and even shocking, since we have
always known that to love my neighbor is to love God. Well, the answer is yes
and no. In the Gospel the Lord was careful to point out that the first
commandment is that we love God with all our being. Thus the Gospel brings us
to appreciate the fact of the primacy of the love of God. Before anything else,
we have to love God first, and nourish that love in our hearts and lives. But
one may ask: how can I love someone whom I cannot see, nor touch? As the
apostle would state, nobody has ever seen God. And yet on the other hand, man
CAN love God; the human heart was made to love Him, and as St. Augustin would
have it, our hearts are restless until it rests in Him. The human person is capable of loving that which he cannot see with the
eyes of his body. Just because we cannot see someone whom we cannot love
because he is far away, can we say that we love this person less? No, of course
not. But in Jesus Christ we have seen the
face of the invisible God. The mystery of the Incarnation, of God being born
and taking on human flesh, allows us to caress the face of the Unseen with our
own hands. This Gospel ought to push us to intensify our own prayer life,
our relationship with the Lord, hidden in the Blessed Sacrament, waiting for us
in the silence of our daily life, in the hustle and bustle of our work. The
love of God ought to be first in our lives.
This
is so because without this love it is impossible to do the second. To love our
neighbor in the Christian sense is different from just being good, being civil
with the other person. In this sense the Christian is different from the
philanthropist. The one who loves people, but without any reference to God is
not a Christian, but a mere philanthropist, who may do a lot of good
nevertheless. Philanthropy is incapable
of saving the world. On the other hand, only the love of God in the heart
of a Christian could move him to cooperate in the transformation and the
establishment of an earthly city pleasing to God and a world that is truly
humane. True, the love of God is different from the love of neighbor, but it
never excludes it. The former serves as the basis of the latter, and pushes the
person to express this love in making the preference for the other.
What
is the consequence of this Gospel for us? The first part—that on the love of
God—I have already expressed above. As for the love of neighbor, we ought to
express this preference for others, to show this love for others. How? By
living this Christian love in the particular conditions that we find ourselves
in. these things we ought to discover in our prayer before God. In the public
sphere however, we Christians are asked specifically to contribute to the
welfare of society. In the International Theological Symposium that was
concluded this week in the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarra, in
one of the talks it was concluded that charity should be the main contribution
made by the Christian to society. In giving testimony to this love, this
charity, the Christian ought not be contented to remain in the periphery of
public discourse. We have to lend a hand in the construction of a just society
with the testimony of our Christian faith, that could contribute so much for a
humane society.
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