“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.” Mt 22:34-40
30th Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle A
While the Pharisees were fond of multiplying laws, Jesus was dividing laws. Not satisfied with the 10 commandments, The Pharisees multiplied them into 613 additional laws. How? For instance, for the third commandment, to keep holy the Lord’s Day, they specified the weight that was allowable for one to carry on the Sabbath so that it was not considered work. They also specified the distance one can walk from the house, and so on. Now one can understand how they ended up with 613 laws.
Jesus on the other hand divided the 10 commandments into two: Love of God and Love of Neighbor – which are actually only one commandment of Love. Thus, Augustine said, “Love and do what you like.” This is equivalent to Don Bosco’s “Run, jump, shout, do whatever you like as long as you do not sin.” Not sinning here is understood as loving God and everybody else.
Why is Love the greatest commandment? It is because God is love. This is what St. John the Beloved Apostle wrote in all his letters. It is also what we hear from the first reading today from Exodus where Yahweh said, “If anyone cries to me, I will hear him because I am compassionate” Ex 22:20-26. God listens because God is love.
St. Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, reminds us also to love like the Lord when he wrote “And you became imitators of us and of the Lord,” 1 Thes 1:5c-10
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