Love of God and Love of Neighbor

Friday, August 19, 2016
20th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Ez 37: 1-14 Gospel: Mt 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. One of them, a teacher of the Law, tried to test him with this question, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law?”

Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the most important of the commandments. But after this there is another one very similar to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole Law and the Prophets are founded on these two commandments.”

D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)

Today’s Gospel strengthens the umbilical cord that links love for God with love for one’s neighbor. The linkage is akin to the relationship involved between mother and her infant in the womb. But while the mother-infant relationship is one-way, in the sense that only the infant benefits from the mother biologically, the love-God-love-neighbor relationship is two-way. One cannot love God as He wants loved unless he loves his neighbors. Similarly, one cannot love his neighbors the right way unless he truly loves God. Giving up the neighbor even if the reason is to love God more will not even amount to anything meritorious.

We are not putting both on equal footing. We know that love for God enjoys primacy over love for one’s neighbor. But love for God needs an outlet lest it becomes stagnant. Like stagnant water that becomes toxic to a drinker, it is destructive to a person’s spirituality. The toxin generates hypocrisy – a chronic cancer that splits one’s personality. The hypocrite may continue loving God. But his love for God will be like the seed planted on rocky ground, or even on thorny ground. He will lack the energy to handle conflicts and trials inherent in faith. His cold attitude towards the neighbor will only douse whatever degree of warmth he can muster for God. The net effect is a lukewarm faith repulsive to God.

Speaking through the nimble pen of the scribe of the Book of Revelation God said: “You are neither cold nor hot; I wish you were either. But since you are neither, but only lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16). The spitting out is tantamount to cutting off that umbilical cord that binds God and the person. Once the link to life’s source is severed, death comes as a matter of course. No matter how he strives to love God, if he despises his neighbor, he still ends up a walking dead. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM, MMExM, MAPM, REB. Email:[email protected].

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