Today on the church calendar we commemorate Pope Pius X. Born in 1835 in the village of Riese in the province of Venice. He was bishop of Manua and patriarch of Venice; then, in 1903, was elected as Pope. The motto he chose as pope was, "renew all things in Christ." To me this means to have Christ at the center of all who we are and all that we do.
In the gospel reading for today's Mass Jesus explains how are are to renew all things in Him. He was asked what was the greatest commandment. Jesus' response was, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40) These are pretty strong words for us to follow. Jesus is telling us that, to be His true followers, we are to love others as much as we claim we love God!
Loving God, it would seem, should be easy for most all of us. We go to church, we pray and do our devotions and rosaries. Yet, when we leave and come in contact with the people around us, we get upset and annoyed at them, whether it's our spouse, our family members, our neighbors or our co-workers. When at work, we may get wrapped up in gossip about our co-workers! Instead of being charitable towards those in our lives, we tend to judge them!
We all need to work on Jesus' command to love our neighbors as ourselves! That includes everyone, and most especially those who we find most annoying and unattractive in our lives. Love them and respect them as you would love and respect God. In this way, we can renew all things in Christ.
I understand that to renew all things in CHRIST is putting CHRIST at the center of all we do. I understand that the two greatest commandments are to love God above all with everything we are, have & do and to love our neighbor as ourselves. I agree that loving God and loving neighbor are tied together, because in the letter of John it is written that we cannot truly claim to love the God we can't see if we cannot love the neighbor that we can see and that often the way we show our love for God is through our love for neighbor. But I don't see the Scriptures telling us to love our neighbor as much as or in the same way that we love God.
ReplyDeleteBeing that Jesus ties love of God with love of neighbor, and that John clearly points out in his letters that we cannot truly claim love of God, who we can't see, and not love our neighbor who we can see, we must love our neighbors as much as we love God. Further, in Genesis 1:27, we read, "God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Being that we are all made in God's image, we are expected to love each other as much as we love God. By loving our neighbors as God intends, this world will become a better place to live.
Delete"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another." 1 John 4:11
ReplyDelete