By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THAT’S when Christ responded to those who asked him what the greatest commandment was. (cfr. Mk 12,28-34) After telling them that the greatest commandment was to love God with one’s whole might, he proceeded to tell them without being asked what the second greatest commandment was. And it was to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
In other words, loving God cannot be real unless one also loves his neighbor, which actually means to love everyone else. Thus, St. John in First Letter said: “If a man says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (4,20)
We need to clearly see the link between God and neighbor who should be both the object of our love. We often take it for granted. While we may appear to be close to God because we pray, we profess our faith in him publicly, etc., it may turn out to be only a sham, because how we treat our neighbor, who actually can be anybody and everybody, belies our supposed closeness to God.
This is because how we treat others can actually show how we treat God. If we are indifferent to the others, we can actually say that we are also indifferent to God, even if our appearance may seem otherwise. If we hate someone, we can also say that we are hating God.
Why? Because if we truly are believers and lovers of God, then there’s no other way but also for us to truly be lovers of everyone else, no matter, how the others are. God loves everyone, even if not everyone may love him in return.
What we can draw from these considerations is that for us enter and share in the very life and nature of God, we have to learn to love everyone, as Christ himself commanded us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 13,34) He even commanded us to love our enemies. (cfr. Mt 5,43)
This may sound like a very tall, if not, impossible order, but it’s clear that for us to share the very nature and life of God, as we are meant to do, we have to have the same love God in Christ has for everyone.
This will require a lot of effort and sacrifice, but we should never forget that we can only have that love if we ourselves are receptive and responsive to the enabling grace that God himself pours and shares with us. We only have that kind of love if we truly are with God. On the part of God, he is never stinting in sharing what he has with us. Again, things depend on how receptive and responsive we are to that grace.
We should just learn how to truly identify ourselves with God. This we can do if we, with faith, would just follow God’s will for us, as shown to us by Christ. We need to make acts of faith especially because our reason cannot fully fathom and understand the will and ways of God.
Said in another way, let’s make our reason to be animated first of all by faith rather than my its natural operation which we should neither give up. Our natural reason should follow what our supernatural faith would show us.
This is how we can share God’s very own life and nature and manage to love everyone which is the very essence of God.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
