renew your wonders: 19 August 2022

The Pharisees were confident that they were masters of the law, that there knew the exact hierarchy of order and proportion among the commandments, and that they insisted on rigid conformity with what their mastery had derived from them, for themselves and everyone. They thought only of the letter as something that could be controlled, and when controlled, wielded as a weapon against their opponents.

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

In some ways this seemed like an obvious question with an obvious answer. If this was the case then either Jesus would have given that answer, and been revealed as no different from other teachers, with nothing original to say, or he would have deviated from the expected answer, and replied with something inevitably false.

So then, was Jesus merely saying the same thing that everyone was saying, or was it something else which must, according to the way of thinking of the Pharisees, be wrong?

He said to him,

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Jesus began with what the Pharisees may rightly have expected as the obvious answer. But he began, interestingly, by addressing it to them. The quotation from Deuteronomy includes the word "You" but Jesus quoted it as though he himself was the one speaking, the lawgiver himself. He addressed those who profess to obey the law, to care about the chief commandment, but who were at that very moment putting God himself to the test, who were clearly loving themselves and their own wisdom more than God himself, either as revealed in scripture, or in the flesh before their very eyes.

This is the greatest and the first commandment.

The Pharisees asked for one commandment, and in this way they sought to limit or constrain the law. For if this was greater it could be set against the lesser as they liked. But Jesus refused to let this commandment stand alone. It was first and greatest, but there was more implied that also needed to be clearly stated.

The second is like it:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The attempt of the Pharisees to neatly categorize and control the law was thus summarily thwarted. What Jesus expressed here was later expressed by John the Evangelist:

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (see First John 4:20).

As we cannot properly do anything at all that is a benefit for God, who is perfectly happy and joyous in himself for all eternity, we are meant to show our love for him by loving his image in our fellow creatures. This was a recurring theme in God's revelations to Catherine of Sienna.

So she loves every person with the same love she sees herself loved with, and this is why the soul, as soon as she comes to know me, reaches out to love her neighbors. Because she sees that I love them even more than she does, she also loves them unspeakably much.

– Saint Catherine of Sienna, from the “Dialogue” pg. 164

The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

Asked one question, Jesus taught at least three lessons. First, that to know the greatest commandment was different from living it, and he desired and commanded that it be lived. Second, that love of God and love of neighbor could not be set against each other, and that either one when it was true implied the other. And third, that the law was not something that could be tamed or controlled. It depended not chiefly on mastery or expertise, as the Pharisees thought, but on love. The competent interpreter of the law was not the one who knew much but the one who loved much.

The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

It is easier to focus on the understanding of the law than the doing of it, the speaking of it than the acting. But to do so dries up our bones and destroys our spirits. When we neglect the Spirit behind the law we neglect our own spirits as well, to our detriment. But God stands ready at every moment to restore us to life. We will not then be individuals jockeying for position. We will be a vast army for the Lord.

I prophesied as he told me, and the spirit came into them;

they came alive and stood upright, a vast army.