At the peak of the so-called “woke-wave” that has shaped public discourse over the last decade or so, many “progressive” figures urged the Catholic Church to adapt to new language and fashionable ideologies. The Church has patiently answered with counterarguments drawn from its teaching, often met with derision and accusations of being rigidly backward. At the heart of this cultural clash was a common misunderstanding: that the Church is like any other law-making body, where everything can be discussed and changed at will. The Catholic Church considers itself the guardian and interpreter of divine revelation, not its creator. Over the centuries, the Church has remained faithful to doctrine while adapting its pastoral and practical approach to life’s ever-changing social aspects and challenges.
At the heart of the ever-ongoing discussions within the Church is the permanent tension between the two main commandments mentioned by Jesus in today’s gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. […] You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” The main challenge is striking the right balance between them; favouring one over the other can lead to either merciless moral rigidity or misplaced, self-indulgent leniency. The plenitude of current and historical examples illustrates that all too well.
Although these two fundamental rules seem simple at first glance, applying them in practice is more complicated. Many everyday situations put the love of God in conflict with the love of neighbour; for example, when one wants to go to Mass, but their spouse has other plans, the choice is tough and upsetting, whatever the final decision. And then we have all these difficult moral choices on a much greater scale, such as unborn life, euthanasia, wars, and so on. We face these kinds of choices, big and small, regularly. With some, we handle them almost instinctively, thanks to our moral compass. Yet it needs recalibration from time to time. That’s why we’re here. Let’s pause and consider what these two commandments mean and how we should understand them.
“We love God because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) Throughout the biblical tradition, our love of God is an imperfect response to his perfect, total, personal, and unconditional love. God has a plan of peace and happiness for each and every one of us. Through faith, we cling to his plan with all our powers: “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, allowing God to penetrate every aspect and dimension of our lives. Every sin is fundamentally a rejection and a questioning of God’s love. “The love of God is this: that we obey his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3) for those who accept them as gifts of love and the way to genuine happiness.
These quotations from the first letter of St John lead us towards the second part of Jesus’ teaching: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Today’s first reading gives us figuratively a couple of reasons for this rule: because of our own past experience (“you were sojourners in the land of Egypt”), because of our own unknown future when we might expect compassion (“your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless”), and – last but not least – simply because of compassion for our fellow human beings.
To sum up: love of God without loving others is indifference dressed as piety; love of others without loving God can be misplaced or delusional. Harmoniously combining love of God with love of neighbour cannot hurt anybody, because “on these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
