Love God and Neighbour

Jesus reduces all the commandments into two similar to each other... love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind... and if you do this and you love yourself in the same way, then you can love also your neighbour. (Mt 22,38)

How you love God is how you love your neighbour... how you love your neighbour is how you love God. John takes this in a different way in his letter and says, "Anyone who says she loves God, and hates her brother or sister, is a liar" (1John 4,20).

History shows us that we, in general, have failed to take this seriously. As a Church we were more defined by exclusion rather than inclusion. Jesus speaks of one Kingdom, one family, one Church, if you wish. Our national boundaries mean very little to God. We’ve created differences that God probably calls them variety. “All the nations mean nothing in God's eyes.” (Is. 40,17) But for us, they are important, they are real.

We fight for our boundaries, our cultures and our ideas. We create our small kingdom and separate it from others. Our security, identity and treasure is in our small kingdoms not in the great "Kingdom of God". And so we end up loving more our kingdom rather than God’s people.

So when God says, “you cannot love both God and money” (Mt. 6,24) he is telling us to love God and neighbour, more than we love our money and our small kingdoms. He calls us to go out and love everyone. It is this love that will change the world. And we are called to create a world that reflect God’s love rather than our self-interest.

I write this as I think of Mission Sunday and when the liturgy speaks about the love of God and neighbour. I pray that we understand that God is calling us for something more.