“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
When Jesus is asked to give the greatest commandment, he starts with loving God and ends with loving our neighbors. We can never love too much as long as our love is based on selfless charity, rather than selfishness. This is why it is so important for us to nurture the virtue of love on a steady diet of humility and perseverance. Not everyone we meet will love us. Some of them may come to hate us. However, as Christians, we can never allow their lack of love or hatred to sway us away from loving them as God loves us. If God, is willing to love and forgive them, then we must do the same. We might not like them, but thankfully love is a choice that we can make in spite of how we feel about someone else and how they treat us. Love is an act of free will that frees us from the chains of bitterness. It is our key to a happy life, no matter what we might suffer along the way.
Do we love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds? Do we love our neighbors as ourselves? How can we overcome our dislike for certain people and come to love them as God does?
O Lord, we love you and all your children.
Amen.
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