Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
These, Jesus says, are the two great commandments.
It sounds pretty simple.
Of course, anyone who has tried to love
either God or neighbor,
much less both,
quickly discovers that this
is a fairly complicated affair.
These, Jesus says, are the two great commandments.
It sounds pretty simple.
Of course, anyone who has tried to love
either God or neighbor,
much less both,
quickly discovers that this
is a fairly complicated affair.
How do we love God,
when God can seem so distant and mysterious,
so difficult to know?
Who is the neighbor that I am supposed to love?
Is it anybody and everybody?
Does it include my enemies?
Is it okay to love some more than others?
Does love mean accepting people as they are
or does it mean working to help them be better?
And how exactly do these two things—
love of God and love of neighbor—
relate to each other?
Can I do one without the other?
What if my love of God
seems to come into conflict
with my love of neighbor?
Which has priority?
We might continue to multiply questions,
but at some point the questions must end
and we have to get about the business of loving.
After all, love of God and neighbor is presented by Jesus
not as a helpful hint but as a command,
and our questions can become a kind of evasion.
There are many things we can come to understand
by stepping back and pondering them,
but we can only discover what love means
by stepping in and actually doing it.
But how do we go about stepping in
to loving God and neighbor?
The best way to step in to loving God
is by praying.
Because God is perfect,
God needs nothing from us;
but, because God is good,
God desires that we give him ourselves.
God wants us without needing us,
precisely so that we can flourish
and be united to God in eternity.
And the way we give ourselves to God
is by giving God our time,
for time is the fabric
from which our lives are fashioned.
To step in to loving God,
offer God your time in prayer.
Offer it without worrying too much
about whether you’re doing it right.
Just ask for what you want
and give thanks for what brings you joy;
God will let you know whether or not
you’re wanting or enjoying the right thing.
is by praying.
Because God is perfect,
God needs nothing from us;
but, because God is good,
God desires that we give him ourselves.
God wants us without needing us,
precisely so that we can flourish
and be united to God in eternity.
And the way we give ourselves to God
is by giving God our time,
for time is the fabric
from which our lives are fashioned.
To step in to loving God,
offer God your time in prayer.
Offer it without worrying too much
about whether you’re doing it right.
Just ask for what you want
and give thanks for what brings you joy;
God will let you know whether or not
you’re wanting or enjoying the right thing.
My son the musician tells me
that bad practice is infinitely better
than no practice at all.
It’s the same with prayer:
flawed prayer,
distracted prayer,
misdirected prayer,
angry prayer,
bored prayer,
rote prayer—
it’s all better than no prayer.
For in our flawed prayer
God comes to help us,
and God’s Spirit prays within us
with sighs too deep for words.
that bad practice is infinitely better
than no practice at all.
It’s the same with prayer:
flawed prayer,
distracted prayer,
misdirected prayer,
angry prayer,
bored prayer,
rote prayer—
it’s all better than no prayer.
For in our flawed prayer
God comes to help us,
and God’s Spirit prays within us
with sighs too deep for words.
What about loving our neighbor?
How we step in to loving our neighbor
is as varied as the neighbors we love.
Our reading today from the book of Exodus
calls our attention to those neighbors
most in need of our love,
but whom we might be inclined
to step back from.
The foreigner living in our land,
the widow and orphan who have no protector,
the person in need who is subject to exploitation,
all those whom we can easily overlook.
We tend to think of the word “love”
as finding its natural home
in our circle of family and friends.
But the law of love calls us
to cast a wider net.
Indeed, the way to step in
to loving our neighbor
often involves us stepping out
of our immediate circle.
And this means seeking justice
for those most in need,
those most fragile and vulnerable,
those most unprotected and friendless,
no matter who they are.
As the philosopher Cornel West puts it,
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
Concern for the needy stranger
in whom Christ himself is present
is the standard by which we will be judged.
Of course, the love we show our neighbor
through the pursuit of justice
can be as flawed and frustrating
as our attempts to love God through prayer.
I think we Catholics can feel this
particularly during election season
as we confront what is,
in light of the standard
set by the Church’s social teaching,
an array of less-than-perfect choices.
Even more frustrating is the fact
that the needs and the interests
of those crying out for justice—
the widow and the orphan,
the alien and the poor neighbor—
might not seem always to align
and the justice we can achieve
is only a rough approximation
of the justice God calls us to.
But just as flawed prayer
is better than no prayer,
our stumbling pursuit of justice
is better than injustice.
We do what we can,
trusting that God’s Spirit
will work in us and through us.
through the pursuit of justice
can be as flawed and frustrating
as our attempts to love God through prayer.
I think we Catholics can feel this
particularly during election season
as we confront what is,
in light of the standard
set by the Church’s social teaching,
an array of less-than-perfect choices.
Even more frustrating is the fact
that the needs and the interests
of those crying out for justice—
the widow and the orphan,
the alien and the poor neighbor—
might not seem always to align
and the justice we can achieve
is only a rough approximation
of the justice God calls us to.
But just as flawed prayer
is better than no prayer,
our stumbling pursuit of justice
is better than injustice.
We do what we can,
trusting that God’s Spirit
will work in us and through us.
We cannot let the imperfection
of our love of God and neighbor
become an excuse for stepping back
from the love that Christ commands.
The Spirit calls us to step in
and be not afraid.
Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind;
love your neighbor as yourself.
Trust in the Spirit to aid you in your weakness
and to bring to completion
the good work begun in you.
And may God have mercy on us all.
of our love of God and neighbor
become an excuse for stepping back
from the love that Christ commands.
The Spirit calls us to step in
and be not afraid.
Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind;
love your neighbor as yourself.
Trust in the Spirit to aid you in your weakness
and to bring to completion
the good work begun in you.
And may God have mercy on us all.
