LOVE, THE SYNTHESIS OF THE LAW.
October 31, 2021
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time – B.
“To love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all
burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mk 12:33)
An Amerindian proverb says: “When you have learned about
love, you have learned about God.” And a Jewish proverb adds: “Only love gives
us the taste of eternity.”
One truly lives his life and comes closer to God, only when
he knows how to love. Love is what comes to us from God and relates us to Him
and others. Life without love is a consecration of individualism and opens to
indifference, and selfishness, and the worst form of narcissism.
When you enter our Center for Children with special needs,
the so-called disabled children, the Cottolengo Filipino, one sentence welcomes
you: "Life is love." For, we live to love. He who fails to love, even
though alive is a living-dead, that is, an accumulation of meat and bones
without importance.
One word is the center of today's liturgy, love. About it,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Jesus makes charity the new commandment.
By loving his own "to the end," he makes manifest the Father's love
which he receives. By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of
Jesus which they themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: "As the Father has
loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love." And again: "This is
my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” CCC 1823.
So, love is what makes our identity of Christ-followers,
identical to him. Asked by a Scribe, "Which is the first of all
commandments?", the Lord answered straight away: "The first is this:
Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the Lord alone! You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with
all your strength." If that is the first, it means there is a second. So,
the Lord adds, "The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as
yourself."
Love, thus, is the alpha and the omega of all things, the
beginning and the end. Love is the reason why we live and love is what gives
meaning to our lives. The Lord adds that "there is no other commandment
greater than these." There is nothing greater than love. The real
greatness and meaningful life are found in loving God and loving others.
For an Israelite, the "Shema Israel" is the heart
of their life. It is the pillar of their faith and the constituent rule that
makes of them a Nation, and God's people. Moses, while giving the divine law,
expresses the centrality of love. He told the people to keep this command as
fundamental for their life. The oneness of God is made manifest in love. For,
God is love because he is a communion of love. The mystery of the Trinity is a
mystery of unconditional and undivided love.
Jesus, our High Priest offered the one's and perfect
sacrifice because he sacrificed himself out of love for his friends. Love is
all that matters. Without love, nothing of all that one can do has a sense.
Regrettably, we live in a world where love has lost its
centrality as well as its primary meaning. Many people love themselves more
than they can love God, not to mention even the love they owe others. For the
self-love’s sake, people kill, abuse others' rights and ruin they live, destroy
the society and the environment, do all kinds of evils. The love of one-self
occupies their hearts, minds, souls, and whole beings to a point that even God
and religion become a means at their use. Love for the self, beautifully called
selfishness has blinded many to the extent that the neighbor, the brother does
no longer exist, but just as an instrument to achieve their goal.
Utilitarianism has become a lifestyle. You are useful for me; I force myself to
love you. The day you are no longer in use, you may die, that affects me not.
Jesus, the high priest of the new covenant, by giving his
own life in sacrifice on the altar of the Cross taught us how we should love
God and the neighbor. In giving the Law of Love he stretched on the fact that
the neighbor must be love just as we love ourselves, and with all that we are,
heart, soul, mind, strength... To love others less than that way is not love.
For, love knows no half-measure. Either you give it fully or you do not give it
at all. To love is to give oneself fully, that is: physical, mental, emotional,
and spiritual. Our world would be a better place if we know what it means to
love and live for love. Regrettably, love today is conjugated with the pronoun
of self and evaluated on what one gains from it. Selfishness has become the
norm in many relationships. The love for the self is corroding many
relationships. The Lord exhorts us to love our neighbor as ourselves. He did
not say to love ourselves more than our neighbor. What we see today is as we
said, the consecration of the self. People steal for the self. Kill for the
self. Abuse others’ rights for the self. Seek for a position of authority for
the self.
The love that comes from God and spreads in our relationship with each other is the synthesis of all commandments. We live life in its fullness and come to know God only when we love. He who loves is licensed of doing anything he wants. He who does not love is condemned to perish in his selfishness.
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