Oct 30, 2021

To Love After God’s Own Heart (31st Sunday Ordinary B)


The words of St. Teresa of Calcutta have always been very simple. But I find them powerful and radical because they are coming from a true witness of the gospel of love. I would always imagine that generous donors from all over the world come to see her ministering to the poorest of the poor and some would cringe at the sight of her touching and taking care of the lepers and would probably remark, “Eww, I wouldn’t do that even for a thousand pounds!” And Mother Teresa would just smile and, without moralizing, would agree with the rich donor as she would say, “Neither would I.” Then her often quoted words come alive and kick me off my growing complacency as I listen to her once more:  “I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.”

Caring for the unlovable not for any amount of money but for the love of God!  Mother Teresa’s life and words are concrete incarnation of the radical call to love—loving God and loving our neighbour as two distinct but interrelated acts of loving. And it’s true, no one can love the unlovable except when one has a heart that loves God and loves like God.

Today’s gospel (Mk 12: 28-34) reminds us of the two greatest commandments.  As an answer to the scribes’ question regarding the most important commandment, Jesus replies: “This is the first: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! Therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  This is the second, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

These two are the greatest commandments and therefore ought to be our most fundamental calling as believers and followers of Christ.  Mother Teresa’s life had the power to touch the whole world, believers and non-believers alike, only because she lived by the words of Christ. She took on the demands of love and gave all her life loving God by loving the poorest. Let us then reflect on these two interrelated demands of love as our own calling too.

Love of God.  Jesus reaffirms the words of Moses in our first reading (Dt 6: 2-6) as the most important of all commandments.  To love God, the Lord, is to love him with our entire being: with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  There’s no room here for partial loving. The demand is total.  We ought to love God with everything that we have and are! This means that God has to be the center of our life. It is God whom we ought to seek in life and serve.  His will and his commandments ought to be the principles by which we live.  In the words of Moses, when we keep God’s statutes, we’re going to “have long life;” “we grow and prosper all the more” in the promised “land flowing with milk and honey.”  Loving God with our entire being brings life and abundance. When we have God, we shall not be in want.

Our problem is always our divided and confused heart. We often find ourselves desiring and seeking first what the world promise to give.  We can live and die for money, fame, power, etc. But we don’t see ourselves dying for God. Worse, we treat God, maybe unwittingly, only as a means (in our prayers and petitions for instance) to attain these created things thinking they give meaning to life.  Moreover, many times our heart goes for ourselves. We love ourselves more than we love God. We follow our own design and ignore God’s especially when the two collide.  No wonder, our pursuit for a meaningful life implies endless seeking for material gains and maintenance or increase of our personal glory and power. This idolatrous love for things and self only leads to unspeakable social injustices, violence, and un-peace as can be observed in the realities in our midst right now as we speak.

Again, as followers of Christ, let us take Christ’s words seriously.  To save humanity and the world from self-destruction, we ought to check our priorities and the focus of our love. God has to be our first and highest value and the center of our lives, individual and social. We have to love God above all else and seek first his reign and everything will fall in place.

Love of Neighbour.  A necessary implication of our commitment to love God is to love our neighbour as ourselves.  Again, these two commandments have the book of Moses as their origin. But the Mosaic Law presents them separately and no stress on their interrelationship is made.  Jesus has placed them together and hence, offers a new Christian perspective to loving. In the words of John Paul II: “One cannot love God if one does not love one’s brethren, creating a deep and lasting communion of love with them.”  Christianity will always see these two loves as two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one and ignore the other.

A person who truly loves God also learns to love like God.  Hence, we love not only those who are close to us and those within our circle of friends. Like God who loves and provides for the needs of all without distinction, we are also called to love without distinction.  The neighbour then includes strangers and even enemies as Jesus instructs in another part of the gospel.  Mother Teresa committed her life caring for the unlovable in society—the poorest of the poor, the lepers, the AIDS victims, the abandoned.

Left on our own, we choose whom we love and care for.  We go for those who possess the three Bs: beauty, brain and bank.  We naturally love those who fulfil our fantasies, feed our needs, and make our lives comfortable. “Surround yourself with great people” is our accepted maxim for a successful life. We would shun those who represent the needy in society as we would like to have nothing to do with “liabilities.” Well, we think this way because we have not yet lived according to the commandment of love.

Hence, today we are reminded of our great vocation as followers of Christ-- the vocation to love.  We can make a difference in this world (and Christians are meant to make a difference!) as Mother Teresa has when we take to heart the greatest commandments and live by them.  We need to make God the center of our lives by loving Him with everything that we have and are and learn to care not only for ourselves but also for our neighbours, loving them after God’s own heart.

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