Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time-A
“Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” In this one sentence, St. Paul summarizes that all of the laws and commandments are dependent on the mandate to love another as you do yourself.
St. Paul lists commandments such as adultery, killing, stealing, and covetousness, and says all other commandments are rooted in love. If a Christian loves, then he would not harm his wife and family by having relations with someone who is not his wife. The same holds with other commandments. You cannot love your neighbor and steal from him, nor can you take his life or covet his blessings.
There is a difference between obeying a commandment and following it without exercising Christian love. One might not commit adultery because the fallout is too great. Killing another might not be a good option because of the consequence of jail time. No one really knows what is in a human heart that is filled with toxic covetousness.
St. Paul doesn’t address these possibilities, but it doesn’t matter because his point is that a Christian’s righteousness depends solely on the love one has for his neighbor. Abstaining from evil acts does not meet the demand of the Gospel if love is not the motivating factor for doing good. Loving one’s neighbor as St. Paul speaks of is not an emotional enterprise. Although you can’t speak of love’s mandate without some emotion, it is not the foundation of Christian charity because people can love their neighbor without an intimate connection.
Christian love is more a spiritual connection than a physical one. It presupposes a belief in the dignity of another human being with the realization that, no matter how obnoxious they are, God loves them as God loves us. The tough part about Jesus’ mandate is placing our own needs and desires on the same level as everyone else. Normally, a person keeps his/her best interests in mind long before he/she extends the same to another—the message of loving another as yourself directly challenges our natural self-interest.
What an idyllic situation it would be if everyone followed the commandment to love. Experience has shown this has never been the case. Jesus in the Gospel anticipates the conflicts which arise in daily life. He tells us that if your brother sins against you, it is not a reason to stop loving. Rather, he instructs his disciples to go to that person and try to resolve the issue between the two. Loving another means fraternal correction, not fraternal destruction. Christian love dictates reconciliation, not division.
If the two cannot resolve the matter, Jesus instructs his followers to continue seeking a resolution by bringing in one or two witnesses to testify to the truth. If that doesn’t work, take the issue to another level: the church. Jesus tells us that in all disputes, the rule of subsidiarity must apply: resolve the issue at the local level and, if unsuccessful, only then should the matter go to a greater audience. This would fulfill the mandate of loving another because the motivation is to resolve the issue, not to ruin the other.
In these complex human interactions, it becomes clear that loving one’s neighbor is anything but emotional, especially in conflict. Christians are called to do so because it is a spiritual reality that need not be hindered by human conflict and disagreement. With God’s grace, we can love the unlovable. We need to remember that Jesus loved us first before he asks us to love others. With all our faults, we are beloved by God, and if we are grateful, can we at least try to love our neighbor as ourselves?