To those willing to listen, Jesus goes straight to the heart of what constitutes true worship and spells out clearly the guidelines for Christian living. He tells us God’s commandments can be reduced to two: love of God and love of neighbour. We are to love God with all we have got and, as if that was not enough, we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is the total and complete commitment of love that Jesus is talking about and calling upon us to practice. It is easily defined but presents us with a difficult challenge as it is far removed from the way in which most of us live. A moment’s reflection will reveal that the person we care most for and look after best is our self.
Religion is about going up to God and out to our neighbour at the same time. Love of God is so interwoven with love of our neighbour that it is a difficult balance to achieve. If we don’t strike the happy medium we can easily separate religion from life. To say our prayers and attend Sunday mass, while ignoring our neighbour, is a mere half-hearted response to God’s love, which presents no challenge. It amounts to slicing the commandments down the middle and living with half the gospel. Worshipping God in isolation makes a mockery of religion; likewise love of our neighbour, which has no reference to and does not proceed from the love of God, comes to nothing more than a form of refined self-love.
The biting question to be faced is whether the love of God is evident in the love we have for our neighbour. Take home-life for example: as the years pass it’s so easy to slip into the habit of taking our partner for granted, looking upon her as a provider of meals, a maker of beds and a housekeeper, while failing to respect her as a person in her own right. The same can be true of the children; prized possessions, no doubt, but my property. Perhaps it’s time to become a bit more conscious of those we have ignored and failed to treat as people and to see the faces of those who desperately need our love. We show our love for God through definite and deliberate works of love for the sick, the old and the lonely because we meet God in their lives. Christian love is about getting out of ourselves and reaching towards the needy. The Kingdom of God is continually proclaimed when the love of God and the love of our neighbour are evident in the community.
Fr. Peter Tipane
