DAILY GOSPEL COMMENTARY. “TEACHER, WHICH IS THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT OF ALL?” (Mt 22:34–40).

Gospel of Friday, 20th week in Ordinary Time
Mt 22:34–40

The greatest commandment

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, “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.”

Gospel commentary from F. Fernández-Carajal, In Conversation with God, vol. 5, 55.2

Laetetur cor quaerentium Dominum… Let the hearts of them rejoice who seek the Lord.
The Gospel for today’s Mass is an invitation to joy because it is an invitation to love.
- The law of love is also the law of joy.
- The virtue of joy is not distinct from charity, but a certain act and effect of it (St Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 2-2, q. 28, a. 3).
- Our joy and good humor, whether in calm seas or in rough, constitute a trusty barometer of our union with God.

The Pharisees approached Jesus to ask him which is the greatest commandment of the Law. Jesus answered them: You must 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 resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.
- This is what we have to do – direct our entire being to God, serve our neighbors, open ourselves to the Lord and forget about ourselves. We have to put aside our longing for ease and comfort, our vanity and our pride.
Many people labor under the delusion that they will find greater happiness once they possess a ‘sufficiency’ of things, once they achieve popularity or are more admired …
- They have forgotten that all they need is to have their heart in love. No love can ever fill our heart like the love of God. It is what our hearts were made for.
- All noble love acquires its true meaning in the context of a radical love for the Lord above all things.
  - He who puts his heart in the things of this world will not find the love Jesus promised to his own.(cf Jn 16:22) This is because the worldly person does not know how to love in the deepest sense of the word.
  - Love has its greatest power when it is perfect. Then we forget our own feelings for the sake of the one we love. If this is really the case, if we seek only to please God, then even the greatest of trials will be made sweet (St. Teresa of Avila, Foundations) All trials and tribulations become easy to bear with the help of the Lord.

Gospel Commentary from the Navarre Bible, Commentary of the Gospel of St.Matthew (with permission)

34-40 In reply to the question, our Lord shows that the whole law can be condensed into two commandments: the first and more important consists in unconditional love of God; the second is a consequence and result of the first, because when man is loved, St Thomas says, God is love, for man is the image of God (cf. Commentary on St Matthew, 22:4).
- A person who genuinely love God also loves his fellows because he realizes that they are his brothers and sisters, children of the same Father, redeemed by the same blood of our Lord Jesus Christ: “this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also” (1 Jn 4:2 1). However, “if we love man for man’s sake without reference to God, this love will become an obstacle in the way of keeping the first commandment, and then it is no longer genuine love of our neighbour. But love of our neighbour for God’s sake is clear proof that we love God: “If anyone says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 Jn 4:20).
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself”: here our Lord establishes as the guideline for our love of neighbour the love each of us has for himself; both love of others and love of self are based on love of God.
- Hence, in some cases it can happen that God requires us to put our neighbour’s need before our own; in others, not: it depends on what value, in the light of God’s love, needs to be put on the spiritual and material factors involved.
Obviously spiritual goods take absolute precedence over material ones, even over life itself.
- Therefore, spiritual goods, be they our own or our neighbour’s, must be the first to be safeguarded.
  - If the spiritual good in question is the supreme one of the salvation of the soul, no one is justified in putting his own soul into certain danger of being condemned in order to save another, because given human freedom we can never be absolutely sure what personal choice another person may make: this is the situation in the parable (cf. Mt 25:1-13), where the wise virgins refuse to give oil to the foolish ones; similarly St Paul says that he would wish himself to be rejected if that could save his brothers (cf. Rom 9:3) – an unreal theoretical situation. However, what is quite clear is that we have to do all we can to save our brothers, conscious that, if someone helps to bring a sinner back to the way, he will save himself from eternal death and cover a multitude of his own sins (Jas 5:20).
  - From all this we can deduce that self-love of the right kind, based on God’s Love for man, necessarily involves forgetting oneself in order to love God and our neighbour for God.

VIDEO COMMENTARY

TOPIC: CAN YOU LOVE GOD WITHOUT LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR?

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees which, among the 613 Jewish commandments, is the greatest? Jesus answers them with a verse from Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Then He follows it up with another commandment taken from Leviticus 19:18, “ love your neighbors as you love yourself.” So which is the most important?

TOPIC: Do you suffer from poor I-sight?

The first time I encountered the word I-sight was in Max Lucado’s book Life to the Full. I-sight is not the same as eye-sight. It is not a matter of distorted vision being corrected by lenses. It is about self-love. It can blur your view of yourself that leads to seeing the world, perhaps, far from being real. You can create your own reality that may hurt you more than others. In today’s gospel (Matthew 22:34-40), a scribe asks Jesus which of the laws is greater than the others.

Jesus summaries the law in Hebrew Scriptures, or the Mosaic Law of 613 precepts into two commands: to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Jesus quotes these from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, respectively. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Loving oneself is key to loving others. And when you are able to love others, you are concretely manifesting your love for God. Everything else about loving God – our piety, our daily masses, our scripture reading and rosaries – will have genuine meaning.

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