From: Matthew 22:34-40

The Greatest Commandment of All

[34] But when the Pharisees heard that He (Jesus) had silenced the Sadducees,
they came together. [35] And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, to
test Him. [36] “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” [37]
And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your mind. [38] This is the great and first com-
mandment. [39] And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as your-
self. [40] On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

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Commentary:

34-40. In reply to the question, our Lord points out that the whole law can be con-
densed into two commandments: the first and more important consists in uncon-
ditional love of God; the second is a consequence and result of the first, because
when man is loved, St. Thomas says, God is loved, for man is the image of God
(cf. “Commentary on St. Matthew”, 22:4).

A person who genuinely loves God also loves his fellows because he realizes
that they are his brothers and sisters, children of the same Father, redeemed by
the same blood of our Lord Jesus Christ: “this commandment we have from Him,
that he who loves God should love his brother also” (1 John 4:21). However, if we
love man for man’s sake without reference to God, this love will become an obsta-
cle in the way of keeping the first commandment, and then it is no longer genuine
love of our neighbor. But love of our neighbor for God’s sake is clear proof that we
love God: “If anyone says, ‘I love God’, but hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John
4:20).

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”: here our Lord establishes as the
guideline for our love of neighbor the love each of us has for himself; both love of
others and love of self are based on love of God. Hence, in some cases it can
happen that God requires us to put our neighbor’s need before our own; in others,
not: it depends on what value, in the light of God’s love, needs to be put on the
spiritual and material factors involved.

Obviously spiritual goods take absolute precedence over material ones, even
over life itself. Therefore, spiritual goods, be they our own or our neighbor’s, must
be the first to be safeguarded. If the spiritual good in question is the supreme one
of the salvation of the soul, no one is justified in putting his own soul into certain
danger of being condemned in order to save another, because given human free-
dom we can never be absolutely sure what personal choice another person may
make: this is the situation in the parable (cf. Matthew 25:1-13), where the wise
virgins refuse to give oil to the foolish ones; similarly St. Paul says that he would
wish himself to be rejected if that could save his brothers (cf. Romans 9:3) — an
unreal theoretical situation. However, what is quite clear is that we have to do all
we can to save our brothers, conscious that, if someone helps to bring a sinner
back to the Way, he will save himself from eternal death and cover a multitude
of his own sins (James 5:20). From all this we can deduce that self-love of the
right kind, based on God’s love for man, necessarily involves forgetting oneself
in order to love God and our neighbor for God.

37-38. The commandment of love is the most important commandment because
by obeying it man attains his own perfection (cf. Colossians 3:14). “The more a
soul loves,” St. John of the Cross writes, “the more perfect is it in that which it
loves; therefore this soul that is now perfect is wholly love, if it may thus be ex-
pressed, and all its actions are love and it employs all its faculties and posses-
sions in loving, giving all that it has, like the wise merchant, for this treasure of
love which it has found hidden in God [...]. For, even as the bee extracts from
all plants the honey that is in them, and has no use for them for aught else save
for that purpose, even so the soul with great facility extracts the sweetness of
love that is in all the things that pass through it; it loves God in each of them,
whether pleasant or unpleasant; and being, as it is, informed and protected by
love, it has neither feeling nor taste nor knowledge of such things, for, as we
have said, the soul knows naught but love, and its pleasure in all things and
occupations is ever, as we have said, the delight of the love of God” (”Spiritual
Canticle”, Stanza 27, 8).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

Readings at Mass

First reading
Ruth 1:1,3-6,14-16,22 ©

In the days of the Judges famine came to the land and a certain man from Bethlehem of Judah went – he, his wife and his two sons – to live in the country of Moab. Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she and her two sons were left. These married Moabite women: one was named Orpah and the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died and the woman was bereft of her two sons and her husband. So she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law and went back to her people. But Ruth clung to her.

Naomi said to her, ‘Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god. You must return too; follow your sister-in-law.’

But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you and to turn back from your company, for

‘wherever you go, I will go,

wherever you live, I will live.

Your people shall be my people,

and your God, my God.’

This was how Naomi, she who returned from the country of Moab, came back with Ruth the Moabitess her daughter-in-law. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Psalm	Psalm 145:5-10 ©