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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