A Reflection on Matthew 22:34-40 – Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
One of the remarkable features of the Gospels is the way Jesus responds to those who challenge him. Towards the end of his public ministry, we find an increasing number of confrontations with the religious authorities. The questions become more pointed, and the intention is frequently to draw from Jesus an answer that might undermine his teaching or place him in conflict with those around him. Yet these encounters often become opportunities for Jesus to clarify something essential about his mission and about the relationship God desires with us.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, a lawyer among the Pharisees asks Jesus which commandment in the Law is the greatest. Matthew tells us that the question is intended as a test. Nevertheless, the question itself is a serious one, and it would have been familiar within Jewish religious discussion. The Law contained many commandments, and the rabbis regularly considered how they should be understood, interpreted and lived. The question of which commandments carried the greatest significance was therefore not unusual, even if the intention behind this particular encounter was less than sincere.
Jesus responds by bringing together two passages from the Jewish Scriptures. From Deuteronomy he draws the command to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind, and from Leviticus he draws the command to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Neither commandment is new. What is significant is the way Jesus places them together and makes them the foundation for understanding the entirety of God’s revelation.
He concludes with a statement that I find particularly important: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The Foundation of the Christian Life
I think we sometimes hear the commandment to love God and our neighbour as a familiar summary of Christianity without giving sufficient attention to what Jesus is actually saying. He is not simply selecting two important commandments from a much larger collection. He is establishing the principle through which the whole of our religious and moral life is to be understood.
The Law and the Prophets represent the great tradition of God’s revelation to Israel. By saying that they depend upon these two commandments, Jesus is identifying love as the foundation which gives meaning and coherence to everything else. Our religious practices, moral obligations, relationships and responsibilities must ultimately be understood in the light of our love for God and our love for one another.
This provides a useful way of examining our Christian lives. We can become occupied with particular obligations and activities, including many good and necessary things, while losing sight of the purpose that gives them meaning. It is possible to become concerned about the correct performance of religious duties without asking whether those duties are drawing us into a deeper relationship with God and a more generous relationship with others.
Jesus is not dismissing the commandments or suggesting that the details of moral life no longer matter. Rather, he gives us the framework within which they must be interpreted. Love is not an alternative to faithful living; it is what enables faithful living to become an authentic response to God.
With All Your Heart, Soul and Mind
On listening to this Gospel again, I was struck by the repeated use of the word all. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind.
There is something demanding about that repetition. Jesus is speaking about a love that embraces the whole person. Our relationship with God is not confined to a particular aspect of life, nor is it simply one commitment among many competing interests. It is intended to shape the entirety of who we are.
In the biblical tradition, the heart is more than the centre of our emotions. It is also associated with our deepest intentions, choices and commitments. To love God with the heart is therefore not merely to experience religious affection but to direct our lives towards him. Similarly, the reference to the soul and mind invites us to consider the whole of our existence, including our understanding, judgement and capacity to make decisions.
I find myself wondering what it means to love God with all my mind. Do I allow my faith to inform the way I think about the world, the decisions I make and the judgements I form about other people? Am I prepared to reflect seriously upon what the Gospel asks of me, particularly when it challenges assumptions that I have held for many years?
The word all makes this a searching examination. It encourages me to consider whether I have allowed some areas of my life to remain relatively untouched by my relationship with God. We may readily acknowledge that God is important to us, but Jesus invites us to recognise that God must be the starting point and the framework within which everything else finds its proper place.
A Passion for God and Compassion for Humanity
The second commandment is inseparable from the first: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Jesus says that it is like the first, establishing a relationship between them which we cannot ignore.
Our love for God must find expression in the way we relate to the people around us. There is little value in speaking passionately about our devotion to God if that devotion does not lead us towards greater compassion, justice and generosity in our relationships.
The Catholic social activist Dorothy Day expressed something of this challenge when she suggested that the reality of our love for God is revealed in the way we love those whom we find most difficult to love. It is a demanding thought because it removes the possibility of limiting Christian love to those who are naturally close to us or whose company we particularly enjoy.
I find it helpful to describe this relationship as a passion for God expressed through compassion for humanity. The two belong together, and neither can be fully understood without the other.
Luke’s Gospel develops this connection through the parable of the Good Samaritan. There, the question of loving one’s neighbour leads to another question: who is my neighbour? Jesus responds by telling a story which shifts our attention away from determining who deserves our concern and towards becoming a person who acts mercifully.
That movement is important. We can spend considerable time defining the limits of our responsibilities, deciding whom we are obliged to help and how much we are expected to give. Jesus directs us instead towards the kind of person we are called to become.
Loving God in the World We Inhabit
The preceding passage in Matthew’s Gospel concerns another difficult question addressed to Jesus, this time about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus’ response distinguishes what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God, while also inviting us to consider the deeper responsibilities that arise from our relationship with God.
Although the two passages address different questions, I think they help illuminate one another. Our responsibilities within society are not separate from our religious lives, as though we could maintain one set of values in church and another in our daily dealings with the world. Rather, our love for God provides the foundation for the way we understand and fulfil those responsibilities.
We participate in families, communities, workplaces and civic life. We make decisions about how to use our resources, how to treat those who depend upon us and how to respond to the needs of people beyond our immediate circle. All these things become places in which our love for God can find practical expression.
I think we need to ask ourselves regularly whether our commitment to Christ is evident in the way we undertake these ordinary responsibilities. Does our faith make us more attentive to others? Does it encourage honesty and fairness in our dealings? Does it influence the way we respond to those whose circumstances, beliefs or experiences differ from our own?
If God is truly the framework of our lives, then our relationship with him must shape the way we inhabit the world.
Allowing the Gospel to Examine Our Lives
One of the things I particularly value about Lectio Divina is that it does not allow us to remain at the level of understanding an ancient text. We certainly need to study the Scriptures carefully and appreciate the circumstances in which they were written. But the Scriptures are inspired, and through them God continues to speak to us.
When I returned to this Gospel for a second reading, I found myself drawn again to Jesus’ final statement that the whole Law and the Prophets depend upon these two commandments. I began to think about the possibility of reviewing my own life in their light.
Am I genuinely placing God at the centre of my decisions and priorities? How fully am I responding to the command to love him with all my heart, soul and mind? And how is that love being expressed in my relationships with the people around me?
These are questions which cannot be answered simply by considering our intentions. They require us to look at the actual shape of our lives, including the way we use our time, respond to difficulties, exercise responsibility and attend to the needs of others.
The movement of Lectio Divina is always from the Scriptures into life. Having listened to Jesus, we must eventually identify something practical through which we can respond.
I am also reminded of Jesus’ teaching about the vine and the branches in John’s Gospel. He tells his disciples, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Even our desire to respond more faithfully to the commandments depends upon God’s grace. We do not become more loving merely by resolving to make ourselves better people. We grow in love through our continuing relationship with Christ, who enables us to live what he teaches.
Perhaps, then, the invitation of this Gospel is to undertake a simple but serious examination of our lives in the light of these two commandments. We might discover an aspect of our relationship with God which needs greater attention, or a relationship with another person in which we are being called to greater understanding, patience or generosity.
Whatever we discover, the important thing is to respond.
The commandments to love God and neighbour are not merely a summary of Christian morality. They describe the direction and purpose of the Christian life itself. Our faith begins with God, is sustained by God’s grace and finds its fullest expression when the love we have received becomes visible in the lives of those around us.
by Bishop David Walker