The great commandment

We See once again today how the Pharisees, no less than the Sadducees, would not give up trying to trap Jesus into some contradiction or inconsistency, especially by confronting some of his sayings with the prescriptions of their own law.

One of them, versed in the Law, put to Jesus a particular clear-cut question about a matter probably debated also among themselves. There were altogether not ten, but 610 commandments in the old Law, subdivided between 'light' ones and 'grave' ones, infringements of the latter being expiated only by death.

Our Lord's questioner seems to be concerned only with the 'greatest' of these commandments, and that apparently, as the text suggests, not to learn from Jesus, but to try and trap him into some contradiction.

Jesus' answer was, of course, already quite well known to the questioner: "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with thy whole heart, mind and soul". But Jesus' reply would not have been complete without yet a second statement which they must have already been familiar with, one into which they had thought they could trap Jesus. Hence the second part of Jesus' reply: "And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself". Here it was 'they' who found themselves trapped by Jesus' unexpected reply. Hence as Matthew puts it at the end of this section, they finally gave up asking Jesus any further questions.

Loving God with one's whole heart, mind and soul! The Jews were absolutely familiar with that divine commandment. With those words they opened their twice-daily prayer. They urged the submission of the heart (in Hebrew idiom the centre of intelligence) and of the soul (emotions and principle of the sensitive faculties) to God, and both of these "with all your strength".

To the arrogant questioners it must have been quite surprising that the Lord joins the love of God to the love of neighbour. The fact that Jesus speaks here of the "second" commandment without being asked shows his unwillingness to separate the two: love of God and love of neighbour. As someone has put it, "love of neighbour and love of God are child and parent". True love of neighbour is but an overflow of true love of God.

As Our Lord is the first one to present these two precepts as one, so he is also the first to give the widest meaning to the word 'neighbour', as it becomes more than evident after reading all the four Gospels. Your neighbour is not only the person who lives next door to you, neither only your closest friend or your benefactor but every fellow human being who no less than yourself is the object of God's love and has been redeemed by Christ our Lord. No one is excluded. Your neighbour, in a very special way, is the person no matter who, who 'needs' your help and whom you actually 'can' help.

Elsewhere Jesus has said: "Love one another as I have loved you!" Christ has died not only for me, nor for some others only, but for all human beings. No one, no matter who, is excluded from Our Lord's love. Hanging on the cross he asked the Father to forgive his crucifiers, for "they know not what they". By this prayer Jesus was putting into practice what he himself has said to his disciples again and again: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you."