Mark 12: 28-34
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Connected to God’s Love
The order of these two commandments is important, starting with loving God with our entire being. Because we are human and fallible, we often choose to worship selfish ideals like power, popularity, and earthly wealth, which quickly obstructs our ability to be loving. On the other hand, if we love God first and foremost, then we are connected to the eternal source of unconditional love, reminding us that we too can be generous in love with others.
In Part II – love your neighbor as yourself – this implies that you have to love yourself. Persons who are hurt, lost, and/or disconnected sometimes hurt others as a result. If you don’t value your own self-worth or work on healing, then you’ll treat others accordingly.
These commandments call us to be integrated, whole persons, connected to God’s love for us and God’s delight in our imperfect selves. When we can embrace ourselves as loved sinners, then we are better able to extend that grace to our neighbors.
—Kristy C. Parrish works at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and is the former principal of Immaculate Conception School in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Prayer
Only in love can I find you, my God.
In love the gates of my soul spring open,
allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom
and forget my own petty self.
In love my whole being streams forth
out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion,
which makes me a prisoner of my own poverty and emptiness.
In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you,
wanting never more to return,
but to lose themselves completely in you,
since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart,
closer to me than I am to myself.
But when I love you,
when I manage to break out of the narrow circle of self
and leave behind the restless agony of unanswered questions,
when my blinded eyes no longer look merely from afar
and from the outside upon your unapproachable brightness,
and much more when you yourself, O Incomprehensible One,
have become through love the inmost center of my life,
then I can bury myself entirely in you, O mysterious God,
and with myself all my questions.
—Karl Rahner, SJ