The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments

 

The scripture readings for today's reflection can be found at Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church | USCCB

In our gospel for today we have Jesus’ teaching on what it means to be obedient to the commandments of God. He took the 10 commandments and broke them down to two simple statements: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” “The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But is it really?

Loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind, means that we need to be able to have God as the center of who we are. We are not to have anyone or anything else more important to us than God. All our actions and decisions are to be made with God in mind. In other words, all our decisions are to be made in such a way that they are not against any of God’s laws and commands. Further all our possessions are a gift from God, so we need to make sure we are not making them to be more important to us than our love for God. Jesus is simply saying we are not to have other idols, or false gods, in our lives that we would make more important than our love for God.

The 2^nd commandment that Jesus points out is equally as challenging: we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves! There’s a hymn that I’m sure you may be familiar with, which says in the verse, “They will know that we are Christians by our love.” All throughout the gospels, our Lord points out who are neighbors are. With the parable about the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Last Judgement Day, our Lord points out that all those people that we come into contact within our day to day lives are our neighbors. Whether we like them or not, they are made in the image of God. By helping and loving other people, we in turn are helping and loving God. Our neighbors are not only those people that are in our families or live next door to us, but our neighbors are also those people that we come into contact within our day-to-day existence. It’s not always easy loving the people we meet each day, but that is what Jesus is calling us to do. We are to be kind and loving to all people, even with those that are most unlovable. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, “The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love.”

As we start each day with prayer and love towards God, let us ask Him for the gift of wisdom to love all those people that we meet in our lives, whether we want to or not. Let us pray for them and their intentions that they, too, will receive blessings from our loving Creator. And let us pray for ourselves that we may become more Christ-like in our encounters with the people in our lives that are not to our liking.