Two loves never to be separated

No value in human life has been sung about so much as love. Poems, songs and novels of all literatures of the globe deal with it endlessly. Almost no motion picture leaves it unmentioned. Jokes caricature it and wise sayings try to define what love really is. Suicide and murder sometimes follow its failure.

The Old Testament speaks a lot about God’s love for his creation and especially for humankind  from whom he expects a return of love. The person with the most intimate connection with God in the  Old Testament was Moses, chosen by God to deliver his chosen people from their slavery in Egypt.

He taught the Jewish people wandering in the desert a prayer that Jesus quotes in the New Testament. When asked by a scribe what was the greatest commandment, Jesus began his answer with Moses’ prayer, the “Schema Israel”: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is God 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;/ and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus then adds, “This is worth more than any burnt offering or sacrifice.” He is referring to the warnings of many of the prophets against simply mouthing words and doing religious practices to make oneself appear to be a practicing Jew.

God wants a response from us that is heart-felt, a response of love and a love that is demonstrated in action by caring for others. According to Franciscan friar Father Richard Rohr, this seems to  be what Jesus meant when he taught us the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure of heart.” Our hearts are pure when they are other-directed, not me-directed. True love for others is a grace. God puts that impulse in our hearts but like all virtues, it has to be practiced until it becomes our automatic response to the needs of others. Practicing compassion toward others can warm our own hearts, often to our surprise.

We are human, and human love has to be done, has to be practiced, if it is to become an instinctive part of our way of life. Love of God and neighbor cannot be separated. St. John tells us in his first epistle that “whoever loves God must also love his brother.” In Christian experience any attempt to separate these two loves is bound to fail. John continues, “If anyone says, My love is fixed on God, yet hates his brother,  he is a liar” (l Jn 4:20-21.)This works the other way around also.  To love our neighbor but not pay enough attention to God in prayer and worship results in failure also.

Many a social worker has tried to love God mainly, or only, through loving his neighbor without recourse to God’s grace through prayer. Such efforts often do not last long. When frustrations undo our best efforts to love the neighbor, love of God is needed to keep going. St. Vincent de Paul used to send his priests and religious sisters into the slums of Paris with the warning that “the poor are difficult, often ungrateful and they smell.”

Jesus in his parable of the good samaritan  taught us love in action required only one quality in the recipient, NEED. When we see a fellow human being truly in need of something — food, clothing, shelter, encouragement, a kindly ear to just listen, whatever — to meet that need is to show the neighbor the love that Jesus spoke of. All of his parables, actions and teachings ask us, “Do we balance  our love for God and neighbor in such a way that our continuance of Jesus’ way of life is lasting?”

We practice loving God directly, the first part of the “Schema Israel,” when we pray and sing to him, when we offer to God Jesus’ act of sacrificial love on the cross in the Mass and pledge to Jesus our own love when we receive him in Communion and then keep that promise in our daily interactions with each other, especially the other in need.

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].