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Really, though, today's Gospel might as well just be called the answer to everything. As in, somebody directly asks Jesus what he has to do to win eternal life. This guy, a scholar of the law no less, asks Jesus "Alright just tell me very simply what I have to do". And Jesus does.
Apparently the Bible in Lego is a thing.
If we really want to understand the magnitude of what Jesus says today, we have to look back to our first reading. Since the two are almost always related, we should know right from the start that something very clear and very direct is coming. I won't copy and paste verbatim, but basically what it says is "Listen, if I told you the meaning of life was hidden on some mountain far away, you would pay anything for somebody to go get it for you. I'm telling you the meaning of life is right here in front of you, so just do it, m'kay?"
The Gospel takes that one step further. We have somebody who is an expert at not just 10, but all 613 Jewish commandments. He comes to Jesus and asks him "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Maybe he was expecting Jesus to say something like "Well, you can ignore these laws, but you should probably stick to these ones over here. Oh, and bacon is totally cool."
Much to everybody's surprise, Jesus asks him how he reads it. As a future teacher (hopefully), I like this bit. He could have easily spouted off the correct answer, but he wanted to see if the scholar could get there himself. He wanted to know what he thought, not because he was being a jerk but because he wanted the guy to read Scripture for himself, and not rely on others for interpretation all the time.
Notice here how fast the scholar replies. It doesn't say that he thought about it, or came back later. He just automatically gives his answer, which gets him a "You have answered correctly". My translation doesn't include this, but in my head I like to imagine that he followed this with a little "ding ding ding!"
So we can see the scholar already had a pretty good idea about an answer...so why ask? I think he asked for the same reason we ask a lot of questions: we want somebody to affirm us. We want somebody to reassure us that yes, we're getting it.
Now, on to what he said:
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself.”
So, love God and love your neighbor. Easy enough, right?
In theory, yes. In practice...well...........
The major point here isn't what the scholar (affirmed by Jesus) said here...it's what he didn't say. He didn't say "Love everybody" in a "Love humanity" sort of sense. Because that's easy. It's easy to love something big, impersonal, and blob-like. Anybody can love humanity without really trying all that hard. What's harder is loving the individual.
"I will instinctually make the virtuous choice to benefit humanity. I'm very proud of that. I believe in humanity...people suck." - Adam Ferrara
He may have said it jocularly, but Ferrara hit the nail right on the head when it comes to the difficulty in what Jesus tells us to do today. Loving humanity? Easy. Loving that guy at work that hums too loud, or the lady in the elevator who stands just far enough to the right that you can't get out without squeezing...they're jerks. Loving them is hard. We don't even like them.
Lucky for us, Jesus doesn't tells us to like our neighbor. We don't have to like them in order to love them, not when love means giving of yourself for their good.
My second question with this passage is the apparent conflict of interest. How can you love God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself? You can't really give yourself to both, can you? Isn't there a problem with trying to do what Jesus says here?
I'll give you a hint:
Let's just briefly consider what it means to love somebody. It means to put them above yourself. Ultimately, to will their will above your own. That's what we say when we pray "Thy will be done" - it's a sign of our love for God. We love our friends, and want what they want. We want the best for them.
Well, God wants you to love your neighbor. So really, by doing that we are loving God. Jesus even directly said in Matthew 25 "Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters you did unto me." Who are the least of our brothers and sisters? Let's be honest here: All of us.
So by loving our neighbor - the direct, real, human persons that we encounter in our daily lives, not some faceless "humanity" - we are loving God. But it goes even further than that: We are participating in God.
Hear me out. We know that God is love (1 John 4:8). God mirrors the family in this way (or rather the family mirrors God): The Father pours out his love on the Son, and the Son reflects that love back to the father (by doing his will) and that love is so powerful, it spawns a third person: the Holy Spirit. The family reflects this when a husband and wife's love is so strong it literally spawns a third person: a child. In this case, the Holy Spirit is the love shared by Father and Son. God really is Love, so by participating in that Love for all people, we participate in God. We share God with everybody we love.
So is it impossible to love both God and neighbor? No. In fact, I'll even say it's impossible to do one well without the other. We can't love God without loving people because if we really love God, we would want what he wants, and love whom he loves. If we love our neighbor as ourselves but do not love God, we cannot even say we have love because we deny the very essence of what we share.
"But wait! I don't love myself. I'm a bad person who doesn't deserve love." Slow down there, sport. I've got a lot more to say about that, but for now I'll leave it at this. God says you are worthy of love, and He loves you. Loving him means loving whom he loves, yourself included. God doesn't just say you're worthy of love, he says you're so worthy of love he would (and did) die for you. Are you calling God a liar? Huh? Huh?
Anyway, if you take nothing else from this, remember this: Love. Love specifically. Don't just love "people", love that specific person, right there. With everything you've got. That is how you "inherit eternal life."
Duc in altum
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