With My Everything

In the Gospel reading, a scribe asks Jesus about the first and second of all commandments in life. Basically, what commandment takes the highest priority and what comes next. Jesus responds with the commandment we all know: “Love God and love your neighbors.” The scribe agrees and praises Jesus’ response.

It’s very striking how Jesus is able to simplify and distill the entirety of our Christian faith into these primary commandments. It highlights the importance of love. When we think about it, love is at the center of our existence. We are the product of love, have received love and in turn, give love to one another. In our Sophomore Theology class, we read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” At one point, Frankl discussed the inner life — the interior self that drives and sustains our existence, and he concludes “that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.”. Afterall, what kept Frankl alive throughout his imprisonment was the image of his wife and their memories together. Love, therefore, is the foundation of life and our faith. It’s so plain and simple.

Sadly, the simplicity of it all also belies how we may have taken these for granted. It’s so easy to say I should love God and love my neighbor, it’s another thing to put it into practice. Perhaps when we were younger, it was easy, even convenient to love God and love our neighbors. Our world’s were definitely smaller and we had all the time in the world. But as we’ve gotten older, we got busier and shoulder more responsibilities. With a tighter schedule for work and obligations, we may have struggled to find (or even make) time to love God and our neighbors. It’s not that we’ve stopped loving, but it may have lost consistency or even diminished with time.

On top of all this, we need to reflect and review the quality of our love. Jesus said that we should love God “with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” As for the love of neighbors, we should love them “as ourselves.”

Personally, I know I love and praise God, but definitely lacking in the “all my soul, mind and strength” department. A key part of my Lenten journey is taking time to review what has taken priority or may have even displaced God in my life. In a similar way, I know I love my neighbors, but do I love them as myself? I believe that there are times I may claim to love and sacrifice for my family and friends, however if we extend this to the marginalized and the poor, I find my love of neighbors severely lacking. Reading through this passage and failing to see myself living up to God’s commandments leaves me disheartened. I feel like the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22), who, after being told what he needed to do to enter heaven, left sad and grieving.

 
Then again, nothing worthwhile is ever easy. It’s the same with these commandments. It sounds simple, but demands so much more. I am called to love as Christ loved and I know we have this capacity for love. God instilled in us the great freedom to love so profoundly. And when we do, just like the scribe, we “are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

Author: Kenneth Gan, Theology and Campus Ministry