The great commandment: Love
(Mk 12:28b-34)
"What is the first commandment of all? Jesus answered [...] First is: Listen Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your life and with all your mind and with all your much" (vv.28-30; Deut 6:4-5).
Jesus turns what was the most banal of catechism questions into a crucial question: what is the 'great' commandment?
Despite the different theological schools, the answer was well known to all: the Sabbath rest, the only prescription observed (even) by God.
The question put to the Master by the expert in the Law was not so innocent, but "to put him to the test" (Mt 22:35; Lk 10:25) - that is, to answer him: how then do you not fulfil the Sabbath precept?
Christ simplifies the tangle of disputes, about widening or narrowing theoretical cases, and gets to the point.
Always allergic to bickering over doctrines, he makes a proposal of life as the unifying moment of the demands of the Covenant.
All rules have an essence, otherwise they remain a scattered jumble. They find spontaneous foundation and natural meaning in the gift of self - however motivated.
But what is the solid point and context of such an invitation? A vague feeling, one emotion among many, a passing motion? Philanthropy? Or an experience?
We are thirsty for affection and grant friendship in an alternating current, so much so that love becomes a source of misunderstandings, rooted in the need to complete ourselves.
This is why the second commandment appears as an explanation of the first, not a reduction of it [Mt 22:39; Mk 12:31; Lk 10:27].
In the ancient world, it made no sense to speak of love for God, the ineffable Mystery.
It was the Most High who favoured someone by bestowing material fortune on him, and he acknowledged a duty of worship, and sacrifices.
Ditto for the unfortunate, at least to avoid retaliation (and keep it good).
With Jesus, we openly speak of gratuitousness - not mere gratitude - as the unifying core, both of the person and of salvation history.
The idea of the exchange of favours ends.
The Father has no need of anything; he does not enjoy seeing us submissive and feeling recognised [pattern of pagan religiosity] as a sovereign would towards his subjects.
The relationship with the Eternal remains concrete, but honour to the Most High is manifested by making his plan of good and growth for man his own, and recognising oneself in it.
God's plan unfolds ... with a living demand. But there is a Departure, a Centre and an Arrival. In reality, a new Genesis.
In any case, only God's initiative extracts the best from us: more talent, more desire, more interests, more unexpressed capacities, more unseen - instead of torments that hurt the soul.
It is the difference between religiosity that weakens the personality, and Faith.
Through Faith a special creative Relationship is triggered: that of the one who accepts the Call by Name, as well as the proposals of the Source of being itself - wave upon wave.
They anticipate our initiatives and infallibly guide us to the perfect blossoming of our own and others' Seeds.
Especially in Mt (22:38-39) and Mk (12:29-31), it is clear that love for one's neighbour comes from the experience and awareness of being loved first and unconditionally by God - looked upon, accepted, valued, promoted, gladdened, completed.
One loves not by effort [force is a dirigiste lever: it produces episodes that make life worse] but on the basis of how much we feel loved - and with immediacy, repeatedly, unconditionally.
One loves on the subject of the "forfeit" already experienced in one's favour by Providence, which gives meaning and value to human acts.
Not through infatuation with external, induced expectations, in any case those of others.
Even in the spiritual realm, not a few behaviours thought capable of solving problems, often chronicle them.
In this way, they rely on an idea of permanence - not on the dynamic of vocational gratuitousness, on the unimaginable Gift, to be received.
So the point is to adjust according to resources that come, or the distortion of patterns, typical of the moralist mentality.
Indeed, the scheme of omnipotence in the good, paradoxically, folds the ego and its forces, and distorts its gaze.
But beyond all nuances, we are glad that the first and second commandments are about Love: what we most desire to do and receive. It is an urgency of life.
Yet we must be wise, so that the pattern of paradigms or the stimuli of natural affection and precipitations do not overwhelm and drag away - overturning - every good intention.
Love cannot tolerate an excess of expectations, because it springs from an experience of Perfection that arrives; offered, unexpected, unpredictable. Not already set up according to concatenated and normal intentions.
If authentic, in time we will experience blossoming; not in the expectation of a return, but first and foremost in a Gift outside of time. For it has already satiated and convinced us - with contemplative amazement - and made us rejoice.
Thus the vocational and foundational Eros will continue to mould us, with its perennially explorative virtue capable of activating new Births.
Personal energy - without the usual baggage of torment, reservations, outwardness... and (again) wrath.
Great Commandment: only the profound Quality obliges
The only disposition in which the Father recognises Himself is Love, in the round and all round; not some particular precept.
For Jesus there are no rankings in the things of God and man - in fact He showed a marked tendency to summarise the many dispositions - because only profound Quality compels.
The Master's spiritual proposal appropriated the narrative of God's people and the practice of the Prophets: all heart, feet, hands - and intelligence.
Complete Love for God must envelop the creature in every decision [heart].
Likewise, in every moment and aspect of his concrete "life", as well as involving all his own resources [strength: cf. Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27].
Deut 6:5 (Hebrew text) reads in fact: "with all thy much", meaning a concrete participation in both cultic life and material fraternity - providing and helping with one's possessions.
Matthew does not explicitly mention the latter, perhaps to emphasise that the Father does not absorb energies in any way, but transmits them.
But Jesus adds to the nuances of the authentic understanding with God enumerated in the First Testament an unexpected side for those who think of love as a delicate feeling only.
The Lord suggests the study, discernment and understanding of our perceptions [Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27] accompanied by the mental aspect and deep intelligence (excluded in Deut 6).
At first glance, this appears to be a secondary facet or even a frill for the qualitative leap from a common religious sense to the wisely and personally configured existence of Faith.
The exact opposite is true: we are children of a Father who does not supplant us, nor does he absorb our potential or energy, depersonalising us.
It is a capital implication of our dignity and advancement - even human - and a specific discriminator in the discernment of Faith in Christ, as opposed to all devotional solutions in search of the Absolute (whatever).
Practicality alone makes us fragile, not very aware; and when we are not convinced, we will not be reliable either, always at the mercy of changing situations and the conformist, fashionable opinion of others.
It is not infrequent that we flee the all-embracing confrontation that would enrich everyone - precisely because of incompetence.
But let us not be one-sidedly credulous. Being attentive and up-to-date, having the capacity for even critical thinking is a required expansion in the development of one's human, moral, cultural and spiritual vocation.
Trivialities, identifications, impersonal shenanigans, and half-hearted assembly repetitions get in the way of the tide of life, this divine cascade of perennial energy that pulses and does not go out.
On the contrary, it comes with stirring appeals: it calls us to open ourselves up to new relationship attractions and other interests, even intellectual; even denominational.
Jesus does not speak of love for God in terms of intimism and sentiment, but of a totally involving affinity, made less uncertain precisely by the development of our sapiential measure, regarding matters.
Devotion swallows up everything. On the other hand, Faith does not allow itself to be plagiarised by local or external civilisation: it presupposes an ability to competently enter into personal evaluations or those inherent in the community and overall debate - historical and up-to-date.
The testimony of our Hope does not disdain to allow itself to be fertilised by dialogue with those with greater psychological or biblical expertise, specialist pastoral and social, as well as archaeological, bioethical, economic, scientific and so on.
A commitment that shows true interest in the Sacred [of course, all aspects to be evaluated not as school options].
But it must be admitted that one of the most organic expressions of great Catholic theology is what was once called the 'doctrine' of the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In the existence of Love, the primacy (also relational) of the Gift of the Spirit was recognised, which completed the possibilities of "natural" expression of the cardinal and theological virtues, leading them to fullness.
As many as four of the seven Gifts were related to a character of profound knowledge: Wisdom, Intellect, Counsel and Science.
In short: there is still a decisive rendezvous here for Love in the round.To indulge in a few jokes along believing lines is everyone's domain [individualist or circle], but the ability to enter into the matter is only of those who have been willing to sift through and experience the issues - because they are more interested in understanding the Face of God and His Design on humanity than in reiterating false narrative certainties.
It would be unnatural to recognise a Master of Heaven who does not come to meet us; as if he towered over us with 'his' objective (extrinsic to us) and thus made everyone marginal.
[In the sects - even those with a good-natured appearance - it is forbidden to go deeper, to understand: the position is already there, the candidate must 'only' adapt].
"As (and because) thou art thyself" [sense of the Greek text: Mt 22:39; Mk 12:31; Lk 10:27]: it is a new Birth of life, new Genesis in the spirit of Gift.
The paradox suggested by Jesus surpasses the ancient norm of Lev 19:18.
We love not only the children of our people, "for the fact that" we care to meet and want to enrich ourselves together, expanding the I into the Thou.
God's "Great Command" invests real life and concerns not only the quality of relationship with the world and our neighbour, but the reflexive global self.
One should not be afraid of other doctrines and disciplines, neglecting analytical challenges beyond the 'organic' ones - the long-term ones.
All call into question beliefs, works, one's worldview; language, style, and thought itself.
We still have a great need to broaden our minds and become as vast as a panorama. And reharmonise the opposites we drag in.
Hidden Sides and Pearls to which we have not yet given breath, or visibility - and perhaps never considered Allies.
The troubled fate of the prophets remains unique, but it is not the certainties (ancient, or sophisticated, fashionable, à la page) that are the added value of the Faith in Love adventure - but rather the risk of putting oneself in the balance and the all-embracing reworking.
It is then useless to complain, if ecclesial realities that do not bring themselves up to date, and remain in inherited commonplaces, slowly decay, then disappear.
In spite of their striking heritage and fairy-tale events.
In this way, the "doctor of the law" may already be close [Mk 12:34; Lk 10:28] but he still has to keep an eye on Jesus, to understand in Him the more dilated sense of the total gift, in the specifically personalising, which is not naive.
The Lord brings the meaning of norms back to their profound and original function: to become the viaticum of every encounter that raises events, people of all backgrounds, and creation.
In conclusion, experience and ritual have their fulcrum in the reciprocity of love.
Life in all its facets becomes Liturgy more meaningful than the accredited gesture of worship; its truly broken Bread becomes a convincing call to Communion and Mission.
Even if it does not make the headlines, the authentic thermometer of our journey will not be the volume or the pile of important things we do, but a pulsing regenerated heart and mind.
This is why to the ancient notes of true Love the Son of God adds the quality of thought: we are not gullible, uninformed, one-sided.
Our outstretched hands are the fruit of free and conscious choice. No forced surrender.
"A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully received, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived" [John Paul II].
To internalise and live the message:
What is Great for you? Titles? Have, power, appear?
What in your experience of Love is the Starting Point, the Centre and the Finish?
Do you document and update yourself in order to better correspond to God's Call?
Deep Relationship
Dear brothers and sisters!
The Gospel [...] re-proposes to us Jesus' teaching on the greatest commandment: the commandment of love, which is twofold: to love God and to love one's neighbour. The Saints, whom we have recently celebrated all together in one solemn feast, are precisely those who, trusting in God's grace, seek to live according to this fundamental law. Indeed, the commandment of love can be fully put into practice by those who live in a deep relationship with God, just as a child becomes capable of loving from a good relationship with its mother and father. St John of Avila, whom I have recently proclaimed a Doctor of the Church, writes at the beginning of his Treatise on the Love of God: 'The cause,' he says, 'that most impels our heart to love God is to consider deeply the love he has had for us... This, more than benefits, impels the heart to love; for he who gives another a benefit, gives him something he possesses; but he who loves, gives himself with all he has, without anything else left to give' (No. 1). Before being a command - love is not a command - it is a gift, a reality that God makes us know and experience, so that, like a seed, it can also germinate within us and develop in our lives.If God's love has taken deep root in a person, that person is able to love even those who do not deserve it, as God does towards us. The father and mother do not love their children only when they deserve it: they love them always, even if they naturally let them know when they are wrong. From God we learn to always and only want good and never evil. We learn to look at the other not only with our eyes, but with God's gaze, which is the gaze of Jesus Christ. A gaze that starts from the heart and does not stop at the surface, goes beyond appearances and manages to grasp the other person's deepest expectations: expectations of being listened to, of free attention; in a word: of love. But the reverse also occurs: that by opening myself to the other as he is, by going out to him, by making myself available to him, I also open myself to knowing God, to feeling that he is there and is good. Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable and stand in a reciprocal relationship. Jesus did not invent either one or the other, but revealed that they are, after all, one and the same commandment, and He did so not only with His word, but above all with His testimony: the very Person of Jesus and His entire mystery embody the unity of love of God and neighbour, like the two arms of the Cross, vertical and horizontal. In the Eucharist He gives us this twofold love, giving us Himself, so that, nourished by this Bread, we may love one another as He has loved us.
Dear friends, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, let us pray that every Christian knows how to show his faith in the one true God with a limpid testimony of love for his neighbour.
(Pope Benedict, Angelus 4 November 2012)
