PERFECT LOVE INDWELLS US
Over the last few Sundays we have seen in Mark’s Gospel how many groups with political and religious vested interests have accosted Jesus to challenge his authority, out of envy and self-righteousness, and often with murderous intent. But today a lone individual, someone very much like you or me, approaches Jesus on very friendly terms, even though, as a scribe, he is a member of one of those hostile groups. This man is different because he comes to Jesus by himself, as an earnest, non-prejudiced searcher for truth, without an axe to grind.
The scribe asks Jesus which is “the first of all the commandments” of the sacred Law. This question implies that, among the 613 commandments of Torah, there must exist a hierarchy. Since it is humanly impossible to comply with so many commandments, the hope is that, by obeying the greatest commandment, one can be said to obey God’s will in its totality.
We are so familiar with this text that we may not at first realize that Jesus’ reply to the scribe’s question is remarkable—stunningly creative and even provocative in several respects. For example, the scribe asks Jesus to proclaim only one commandment to be the first and highest of all. Instead Jesus replies by naming two commandments of the Law. By so doing Jesus refuses to separate a first commandment, concerning love of God, from a second commandment, concerning love of neighbor, thus hinting that the two stand or fall together, the observance of the one guaranteeing the observance of the other. Jesus’ ruling fuses the two commandments magisterially: “There is no commandment”, he affirms, “greater than these”.
Furthermore, while the first commandment is taken from the Book of Deuteronomy (6:5), the second commandment that Jesus yokes to it inseparably is taken from the Book of Leviticus (19:18). By so doing Jesus is introducing a major innovation into Torah, in fact creating a new text out of two ancient texts, and infusing both with new meaning. And his boldness is heightened by the fact that, in the context of Leviticus, the definition of “neighbor” has a very restrictive, tribal meaning and not the unrestricted, universal meaning Jesus is obviously giving it here. In other words, Jesus’ answer to the scribe shows him making love as such an absolute priority, giving it a preeminence it did not enjoy before. To do this is for Jesus to act as sovereign Legislator of the New Law of the Gospel, which gathers together scattered aspects of Torah and brings the Law of Moses to perfection by raising so-called “horizontal”, intra-human love irreversibly into the sphere of divine love.
Quite aside from Jesus’ unheard-of audacity in daring to alter in any way the text of the Law, the Lord’s indissoluble yoking of divine and human love into one imperative command is something which the Jewish authorities would have considered sheer blasphemy, an idolatry of man. And yet St John sums up this crucial issue unforgettably when he writes: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). And in Matthew 25, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, the Lord himself radically equates love for him with love for the least of his brethren. Surely it is the indivisibility of the divine and human natures in Jesus’ own Person as incarnate Word that impels him to revolutionize so drastically the biblical teaching on love, and to transform it into the absolute center of Christian faith and life, to which all else must bow.
The commandment in Deuteronomy quoted by Jesus would have us love God “with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength”. This triple repetition of the word all evokes in me an unsettling dismay as I wonder: ‘Am I really capable of loving God so thoroughly, with all my being?’ And the passage concludes with the words: “Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.” As we have being hearing in rich detail from Pope Francis this week in his encyclical Dilexit nos, biblical anthropology views the heart as designating the center of the whole person, the heart as bringing together the whole of our being: bodily and psychic, rational and emotional.
For this reason we should wake up to the fact that the too familiar expression to love God with all your heart is nothing to be yawned at, because involves nothing less than the long journey of our total existence, an itinerary whose rigor we should never take for granted. We all know that in our hearts there dwell not only high and virtuous aspirations but also mean and shameful thoughts and desires that are far from what the Gospel expects of us. Therefore, the first step in coming to love God with one’s whole heart should be the honest acknowledgment that such fullness and intensity of love is still a distant goal for us, yet one toward which we strive with fervent hope.
Now, in order for the expression “to love God” to acquire credibility on our lips, we should stop turning the wheel of the same old tired and pious words that are totally disconnected from our concrete life. Instead we should struggle along as best we can, trying to practice what is quite difficult: to love the invisible God by putting on the mind of Christ as our own and by performing the actions of Christ’s Heart. To do this we must undertake the hard and sobering work of self-knowledge that leads us to recognize, name and accept (at the cost of sharp humiliation) all the negative forces and shortcomings that inhabit us, all the darkness that still lurks in our hearts. To love God with all one’s heart requires the courage to face the work of knowing one’s own heart, and this knowledge normally brings us unwelcome surprises. And yet, such a therapeutic effort is essential if we are ever to stand before God with some degree of authenticity. Knowing our limitations and distortions—whether moral or intellectual, physical or psychological, emotional or affective—is indispensable if we are ever to part ways with the ideal, glittering “I” that we construct for ourselves and present to others and to God by way of self-defense. True enough, this redundant, self-constructed self is a merely imaginary “I”; and yet, unreal though it is, it has all the power of deception and fascination of an idol. The purpose of this journey of self-knowledge is eventual adherence to reality, acceptance of that very particular being we are, with all its negative aspects as well as all its riches. As we read in the parable of the Prodigal Son, this difficult journey to the truth of the self is in the end (O consolation!) a deeply satisfying “coming back to ourselves” (Lk 15:17), a blessed “returning to our own heart”. We cannot meet the Heart of Christ except with our own authentic heart, in whatever state it may find itself, because this and no other is the heart Christ loves and avidly seeks.
The commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” is evidence of God’s trust in us, because God does not command what we cannot do. God believes in us and in our capacity to love, so much so that this commandment also sounds like a promise. The solemn declaration “You shall love” does not only drive home the supreme importance of what is involved, but it also instils a kind of joy about the certainty of its fulfillment: God trusts that we are, indeed, going to do it, and God knows it because he is ready to provide the means to guarantee it! Obedience to this commandment, our striving over and over to fulfill it as best we can, is what is going to shape our heart, making it more Christ-like, more like the Heart of God. Our loving God with all our heart is, after all, only a reflection of the fact that he has first loved us with all his heart in Christ, from the first moment of our existence. Only a faithful Lover can issue such a command! You shall love means: everything you do, do out of love, act out of love, pursue love. You shall love: your true “you” is the “you” who loves. You shall love means: do not be discouraged. The very love you do not see in yourself right now the Lord may give to you as pure grace, at a time you do not know.
And so the Letter to the Hebrews today inspires great trust in our hearts when it assures us that “Jesus, [our great High Priest,] is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them.” What a magnificent truth is proclaimed here! What Jesus lives for, the text says—the meaning of his very existence—is to unite us with his and our Father in love, by making us one with himself. Such is the pattern of perfect love that Jesus is the first to embody and which he holds out to us expectantly: to live exclusively to enhance the lives of others. Indeed, in just a few moments Jesus will give himself to us here and now from this altar as pure, undeserved gift, in his Body, Soul and Divinity—for God is the first to love with his whole being, holding back nothing! We can trust the fact that Christ’s life-giving presence in us will provide the energy of perfect love with which we can love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves: two objects of love but only one love.
Let us, then, strive to love, not out of our native feebleness and chronic half-heartedness, but out of the abundance of Jesus’ own invincible love, which he communicates to us as he now hands himself over to us, irrevocably.
