In the gospel of today’s Mass Jesus is “tested” by the Jewish religious leaders with the question of which is the greatest of God’s commandments (Matthew 22:34-40).
Jesus responds that the greatest and first commandment is that we love God with our whole being. But then, Jesus, unsolicited, immediately follows up with the second greatest commandment – our call to love our neighbor as ourself.
Neither of these responses would have been surprising to his questioners since both of these commandments were already emphasized in Jewish scripture (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).
But Jesus was actually adding a bit of a twist to the “old” law. With the phrase “the second is like it” as he commented on the call to love neighbor, Jesus was not just indicating that the two laws were similar, but rather that these two great commandments were linked, that they must go together.
Jesus is telling us that if we authentically profess a love for God then we must also profess love for neighbor. Jesus is telling us that in order to authentically love God, we must authentically love neighbor. In his response to the Jewish leaders Jesus is establishing the link between the two commandments, two cornerstones of God’s law that cannot be separated, two aspects of God’s law that are on equal footing so to speak. Jesus seems to be telling us that the best way to love God is by loving neighbor. Jesus seems to be telling us that the best way to love God is through concreate acts of kindness and compassion for others, by taking on an attitude of tolerance and forgiveness towards all those we encounter, by subordinating our own needs to those of others.
In today’s Old Testament reading we hear God tell us that He is compassionate and attentive to our needs (Exodus 22:20-26). And today Jesus is reminding us that to be loving, compassionate, and attentive to each other’s needs is to be “God-like”. Today, Jesus once again generously invites us to share in God’s way, to share in God’s life.
So we continue forward on our journey, gratefully embracing the invitation Jesus puts before us. We go forward confident in God’s love for us, asking God to help us treat others with “God’s compassion”, the same compassion that God extends to us.