Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?
What is the greatest commandment? What are the Pharisees asking? What do Jesus say to them? Very often in the Gospels there is a discrepancy between the question addressed to the Lord Jesus and his response to it. Here we are dealing, in part, with such a discrepancy. What are the Pharisees asking? They are probably asking about the most important commandment in the sense of the principle of life. As we know, they had several hundred do's and don'ts. Which is the most important?
The Lord Jesus brings out two commandments from the thicket of all the rules. But these commandments are not just commandments, but rather rules that apply to all life. Both commandments express the spirit of all commandments. These are not commandments in the ordinary sense, because they cannot be fulfilled. After all, we can never say that we have fulfilled the commandment of love. There is always greater love possible. The Lord Jesus wants to show us the right spirit, that is, to show us the rules of life.
The commandment of love fascinates us, but also terrifies us. What does it mean to love? None of us really know it, because only God can love. And the love he showed us completely surpasses us. We admire it when itrefers to us, but when the Lord Jesus tells us: This is my commandment: love one another as I love you (cf. Jn. 12:15), our delight turns into dismay. Who among us can love to lay down our lives for friends? (See 1 John 3:16). Who among us can resist sin, even to the point of martyrdom? (See Hebrews 12: 4).
The one double commandment of love includes at the same time a reference to the essential truth about ourselves. We are made in the image of God and, as his icons, we must also reflect his life, the content of which is love. The commandment of love brings us to the model that is God. The entire ethics of Jesus' disciples is consistently built on this similarity. The Lord Jesus gives, for example, no other justification for the need to love our enemies - the most difficult dimension in our opinion of the commandment of love - but looking at the heavenly Father who loves both: good and bad (see Mt. 5:48). In this way, the commandment to love God wholeheartedly becomes not only a duty to fulfill, but rather a condition for becoming his child. We can imitate him only by loving him. Otherwise, the "burden" of the commandment of love will overwhelm us. Unfortunately, it happens in the life of even very good and naturally sensitive Disciples of Christ who sometimes are brokendown.
On the other hand, when commenting on particular commandments, the Lord Jesus pays attention to what is happening in the heart, that is, in the center of ourselves, in the place, where the fundamental choices concerning life and death are made. If we take the words of the Lord Jesus literally, I am afraid that all of us sin mortally, quite often. Who won't get upset and say something angrily?
What the Lord Jesus wants from us is the true spirit. It is only when you have this spirit that all the commandments and principles given to us by the Lord Jesus take on meaning. Saint Paul in the hymn about love says unequivocally that even the noblest religious attitudes and actions are nothing if they lack love. Therefore, all the teaching of Jesus is directed to the Holy Spirit, who is to lead us to all truth. Only in Him do we get real life...
Love takes a very specific shape in life. In marriage, it causes a complete change in the lives of both spouses. One changes life for the sake of the other. Love obliges, creates a bond more durable than blood.
A word from Saint John Paul II
Love
” Love explained everything to me. Love solved everything for me. That is why I admire love wherever it is found. If love is as great as it is simple, if the simplest longing can be found in nostalgia, then I can understand why God wants to be greeted by simple people; by those whose hearts are pure and find no words to express their love. God came this far and He stopped a short step away from nothingness, very close to our eyes. Perhaps life is a wave of astonishment, a wave of height and depth: Don’t ever be afraid”
Taken from one of Karol Wojtyla’s poems “Song of the Hidden God”. It was used as one of the last lines in the film ‘Karol; The Man who became Pope’ about the life of Pope John Paul II
Until Tomorrow
fr. george