Love: A command performance

This week’s readings urge us to see how our acts of love toward one another bind us to our love of God and God’s love of us. Beginning with this Sunday’s first reading, which comes from a section of the Book of Exodus called the “Covenant Code,” we hear how God cares for humanity, especially the most vulnerable in society. How a person treats the least of these, i.e., the alien, the widow or the orphan, relates to the way that God, in turn, treats that individual. Further, God not only responds to the one who has extended care but also responds to the one needing love. The one without a cloak, for example, not only needs it to cover the body during work but also during sleep. Thus, when that individual cries out, the Lord claims “I will hear him; for I am compassionate.” This Sunday’s responsorial psalm likewise calls upon us to recognize and reciprocate such caring divine overtures by proclaiming our love of God: “I love you, Lord, my strength” (Ps 18:2). 

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Matthew relates a further story of how the Pharisees, determined to disqualify Jesus’ credibility, approach him with another question. Recall that they pride themselves on familiarity with all the many laws of Torah. Though these were promulgated long ago under the watchful guidance of Ezra (Neh 8:1-18), the Pharisees see themselves as the experts responsible for the interpretation of this vast body of legal tradition. Because of their own self-understanding and their assumptions of the law’s demands, their flattery was most likely insincere when they addressed Jesus as “Teacher.” Pretending to look to him for instruction regarding the Law of Moses, they seek once again to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Mt 22:36). 

As usual, when Jesus answers, the Pharisees receive more than they asked for. Instead of identifying one law, Jesus identifies two – the commandment to love God and the commandment to love one’s neighbor – because, as disclosed in Christ’s life, these two commandments are intimately interrelated. Together they form the foundation upon which all the law depends. 

If there is any part of the Old Testament with which Christians are familiar, it is the passage from which these laws of the Great Commandment come. “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” (Mt 22:37-39). Jesus is drawing from two different Torah texts here to answer the Pharisees. The commandment to love God comes from Dt 6:5, and the commandment to love your neighbor can be found in Lv 19:18. Jesus brings both together because of his understanding of God, which warrants the intimate oneness between these two seemingly distinct dynamisms: love of God and love of our neighbor.  

Over the centuries and, perhaps, even today, some struggle with the notion that love of God and love of neighbor take the form of a commandment. A law requiring one to love seems to contradict the very character and dynamism of love itself. We might justifiably argue that love is not something that can be compelled or mandated. Further, even if one is willing to be obedient to this command, how does one actually respond? After all, the very notion of God is difficult to grasp. Sometimes God is referred to as the “Beyond within our midst,” or the “Ultimate Holy Other” or the “Infinite Reality.” How does one even obey a command to love God, a reality so in excess of our capacity to behold, to say nothing about loving this Divine Being with all of one’s heart, soul and mind? Jesus, who answered the Pharisees regarding the greatest commandment, is the answer itself. By way of the Incarnation, Jesus discloses the very revelation of God and the possibility of loving God as Jesus showed us. His life becomes a concrete manifestation of God, the divine self.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were many books written under the title The Imitation of Christ. The notion was that if you acted “as if” you were Christ and loved “as if” you were Christ, you actually became what you loved, a notion often attributed to St. Clare of Assisi in her letters to Agnes of Prague. Jesus’ love of others was intimately bound up with and became a revelation of his love of God. Thus, imitating Christ by loving others, one encounters through this abundant outpouring of love a further discovery. It contains an experience of God who loved us first and who, in turn, we long to love. Thus, loving God is not a commandment, strictly speaking. Rather, it evokes a command performance from us to continue living Christ-like lives.  

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once remarked that her capacity genuinely to love some of the least of society was intimately tied to her communion with the Divine. This intimate union between love of God and love of neighbor was not only disclosed through Jesus and the witness of many of our saints, but it remains an incredible opportunity to which each of us is summoned!