God and Neighbor

Friday, August 23, 2019
20th Week in
Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Ru 1:1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22
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 binds together love for God and love for one’s neighbor. The bond is similar to that of mother and infant. But while in the mother-infant relationship it is the infant that draws nourishment from the mother, not so in the relationship between love for God and love for one’s neighbor. Both are mutually dependent. Giving up love of neighbor in an attempt to love God more will not even amount to anything. Both must co-exist.
We are not putting both on equal footing, for we know that love for God enjoys primacy over love for one’s neighbor. But notwithstanding this primacy, the former is dependent on the latter as its necessary outlet. Without this outlet love for God becomes stagnant and the effect is comparable to how toxic stagnant water is to a person drinking it. Love for God which does not flow towards others becomes toxic to spirituality. The toxin generates hypocrisy – a chronic cancer that splits the personality of the person. Despite this split, however, the hypocrite can still continue loving God, or so pretend. But he will be spreading his butter thin for lack of the right amount of energy to radiate genuine love. 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 which is very 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 his created beings. Once the link to life’s source is severed, death comes as a matter of course. Thus, when one fails to love the neighbor, no matter how he strives to love God he still ends up like a walking dead. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.