The Sign of God is to Love One Another

Prayer for the Day

O almighty and ever-living God, through Your Spirit of Love and Truth, may we do with joyful hearts all that You ask so that we may touch others with Your blessed Life. Amen.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

My Rosary Intentions today:

For my family; Holy Mother of God, please watch over and protect my family wherever they may be.

For the unemployed; Saint Joseph, please help those who are looking for jobs find meaningful employment at a fair wage.

For unbelievers; Mary Most Holy, please help lead these souls to your Son.

For all pregnant women; Please, Holy Family, remind all women of the special dignity of motherhood. 

Reflection

God has given us Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), all of which are perpetually important to living a virtuous and fulfilling life, and in the Gospels Jesus condenses these laws into two essential rules.  (Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27, Matthew 22:37) Even then, He emphasizes the first law as the most important—to love God unconditionally—and only after we are devoted to living out that single law to its fullest will all other teachings of God then fall into place.

God’s first commandment is so strong that it challenges the disciple to love God in three different ways. As if you couldn’t already love God with all your heart, God challenges you to love with your entire mind and your entire soul as well. While it may sound easy to love God with your heart and soul, loving God also with your mind seems somewhat more difficult. The mind is the center of reason, the center for empirical science, philosophical theory, economic systems, and now, for loving God? Like the game played on Sesame Street, one of these concepts just doesn’t belong. How can one love God with their sense of reason, when much of reason today sets out to disprove the existence of God, not only scientifically, but in the human sense as well?

If God created the universe and all of His people in His image, and if the first and foremost commandment is to love God, then it follows that we should love others with equal fervor. Yet in reality, this unconditional love for others sometimes does not seem to be the case.  Political systems fight back and forth over who deserves what in this society, and quite frankly most of the time there is so much arguing that nothing is accomplished. Economic systems suggest that life favors those who amass wealth and disparages those without. Even some social sciences assert a “survival of the fittest” theory, where life will have its winners and losers. In the world today, the task to find a reason to love those around us unconditionally appears impossible. Yet that is precisely God’s challenge for mankind: to find a reason to love every single individual in the face of overwhelming reason against it.

A lofty goal it is, one that many have probably already given up on. More likely is the case that God has set the bar high so that we as disciples may take unconditional love a step further every day. The idea is reciprocal, that if we love God, then we love all whom God made in His image. Likewise, if we all learn to love one another, then we love God as well. One type of love cannot happen in the absence of the other. When loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind finally makes sense, as Jesus tries to get us to understand, the rest of the world will then naturally fall into place.

It is far better for us if we should be able to avoid conflict entirely. But if not, it is far better for us to settle the matter in charity and in love rather than in courts. (Luke 12:54-59) This is for a great many reasons, but principle among them is that it teaches us how to be God's people and how to love as God loves.

Because if God did not settle the matter daily with us in the Eucharist in the prayers of holy people the world over, who could survive?  Contrary to a lot of mistaken ideas, God is not filled with righteous wrath (as we all know He would be well-entitled to); He does not spend His time looking for opportunities to smite and to chastise. Rather, He spends all of His time (“eternity”) trying to reason with us - trying to come to terms before it becomes time to judge.

So He tells us to do likewise, so that we can learn what it is like to exercise God-like love toward all of those who share this world with us. We should make every effort to settle all things respectfully with those who have a grievance with us or with whom we have a grievance. We should abandon our self-centered, self-involved ways and seek to approach God, having forgiven and having been forgiven by those closest to us. This is the sign of love by which we will be known by the world - the sign of God Himself upon us.