Dear brothers and sisters, today Jesus makes a surprising link in the conversation in the Gospel Reading of 31st Sunday of Ordinary Times.
He links forever the commandment to love God with the commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself. When asked for the greatest single commandment, he answers by naming two commandments – loving God and loving neighbor; they necessarily, intrinsically go together.
In Jesus' time, this answer was surprising because it put love for neighbor on par with love for God. No one had ever done that before; everyone simply agreed that loving God came first.
Loving one's neighbor was good, they thought, but it was secondary – the primary thing was loving God. Jesus challenges those assumptions: true love for God, he teaches, cannot exist apart from true love for neighbor. If someone claims to love God, that invisible love can be verified in the visible way they treat their neighbor.
In our day, on the other hand, perhaps the more surprising aspect is the priority Jesus gives to loving God. Our post-modern world has, in many ways, given up on the idea of God.
The sheer quantity of religions and denominations and their inability to agree on doctrines has created a cynical indifference to God. Government and popular culture have almost succeeded in keeping God in the closet – at best.
What the seculars do agree about, however, is the importance of loving one's neighbor – toleration, diversity, random acts of kindness, paying it forward… These are things we can sink our teeth into, so they say.
And yet, is it possible to make the sustained effort necessary for truly Christian love of neighbor, without staying connected to the reason why our neighbor ought to be loved?
In other words, if I don't love the God in whose image my neighbor is created, how long and how deeply can I really, truly love my neighbor?
A Dependable Measuring Stick
How can we measure how much we love God? How can we know? We all love God to some extent - otherwise we wouldn't be here right now. But how much? How mature is our love for God?
St. Teresa of Avila, the amazing Doctor of the Church from sixteenth-century Spain, took her measuring stick from this Gospel passage about the greatest Commandment. She wrote: "We cannot know whether or not we love God, although there are strong indications for recognizing that we do love Him; but we can know whether we love our neighbor. And be certain that the more advanced you see you are in love for your neighbor, the more advanced you will be in the love of God; [and] to repay us for our love of neighbor, he will in a thousand ways increase the love we have for him."
St. Teresa of Calcutta shows the same kind of common sense: "We are commanded to love God and our neighbor equally, on the same level. There is no difference. Love for our neighbor must be equal to our love for God. We don't have to search for opportunities; we have them twenty-four hours a day with those around us. How is it that we do not see, and we miss these opportunities?"
When we obey God's command to love our neighbors, in little things or in big things, we increase the intensity of God's presence in the world - because we reveal his love to others.
Growing in Our Love for God by Growing in Our Knowledge of God
There is an old philosophical dictum that says you cannot love what you do not know. And that's true. To love something, we have to know it. And so, if we want to grow in our love for God, which is the surest way to grow in our love for neighbor, the best thing to do is to get to know God better. This week let's do that.
Here are three things we can do to know God better. First, spend fifteen minutes a day this week reading the Bible. The Bible is God's Word - he reveals himself there.
Second, come and do a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. When we spend time with him, there near the Tabernacle, in silence, in prayerful reflection or even in prayerful reading, he speaks to our hearts. He reveals himself to us.
Third, go for a prayerful walk in a beautiful park. God created the world. The beauties of nature are his work of art. Just as any artist reveals himself in his works, so God does too.
We all want to obey the two great commandments - that's why we are here. God wants to help us. This week, let's let him - let's make a decision today, during this Mass, as we renew our faith, that we will do something, anything, to get to know God better this week, so that we can love him better.