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Loving God and Neighbor

1) Loving God and loving our neighbor are inseparable - if we truly love God, we must also love our neighbor as God loves all people. 2) When we receive God's love in the sacraments like the Eucharist and Reconciliation, we are called to share that love with others through acts of service. 3) One cannot claim to love God if they are closed off to or hate their neighbor, as loving God means walking in love towards our neighbor.

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Yvonne Dolorosa
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129 views2 pages

Loving God and Neighbor

1) Loving God and loving our neighbor are inseparable - if we truly love God, we must also love our neighbor as God loves all people. 2) When we receive God's love in the sacraments like the Eucharist and Reconciliation, we are called to share that love with others through acts of service. 3) One cannot claim to love God if they are closed off to or hate their neighbor, as loving God means walking in love towards our neighbor.

Uploaded by

Yvonne Dolorosa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Mutual Relationship of Loving God and Loving our Neighbor

Love is complicated. In Catholic teaching, it is complicated in multiple nuanced ways. Simply


put, the Catholic faithful believe that God is love and everything more or less follows from there.
The complicated part is in the details, and yes, God is in the details too.
How we treat others can show how we treat God. If we are indifferent to others, we can 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 believe and love God, there’s no other way but also for us to truly be
lovers of everyone else, no matter, how they are. God loves everyone, even if not everyone may
love him in return.
When we look into the Catechism and look at love in all its incarnations, however, it gets more
complex. The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (section 1822) reads, “Charity is the
theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as
ourselves for the love of God.”
When the Lord touches us, He certainly wants to show us his immense love, but He also wants
us to touch others with that same love. When Jesus heals our wounds from sin, He always invites
us to become instruments of the same healing.
When Jesus touches us in the sacraments, especially in Reconciliation and in the Eucharist, it is
never supposed to stop with us. We are always sent to share His love with others.
Think about the dismissal at Mass. Each version tells us to go out and proclaim the good news. It
challenges us to do something. It is a sending forth to bring the love we have received: “Go forth,
the Mass is ended.” “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” “Go in peace, glorifying the
Lord by your life.” “Go in peace.”
In the Eucharist, He gifts us this two-fold love, gifting Himself, and then, nourished by this
bread, the call to love one another as He has loved us enters.
Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Woe to me if I do not preach [the Gospel]” (1 Corinthians
9:16). To proclaim the Gospel, or evangelization, is fundamentally to announce the good news of
the love of God we have encountered as we have come to know and fall in love with Jesus
Christ. That is the true gospel, that is, Good News. Woe to us if we do not communicate to others
the love that Jesus has shared with us.
In his 2005 Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote: “Only if I
serve my neighbor can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me.
The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their
capacity for love of neighbor from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely, this
encounter acquired its realism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of
neighbor are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of
God who has loved us first.” (#18)
Pope Benedict insisted that we can love, precisely because we have been loved first by God. It is
by loving God that we learn to love others. At the same time, only by loving our neighbor can we
know the true love of God.
The Pope Emeritus wrote: “Love of God and love of neighbor are thus inseparable; they form a
single commandment.”
The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor is emphasized. One is so
closely connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our
neighbor or hate him altogether. Saint John's words should rather be interpreted to mean that
love of neighbor is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our
neighbor also blinds us to God.
Loving God and loving our neighbor are indeed inseparable and are in a mutual relationship.
Christ spelled out this point clearly when he clarified what the greatest commandment was. He
immediately added that while the greatest commandment is to love God with all our strength, the
second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor. (Matthew 22:36-40)
If we love God, then we have to love our neighbor. And this love for neighbor was further
clarified by Christ when he gave us the new commandment which is to love our neighbor as He
Himself has loved us. (John13:34)
Let us remember what Christ said in this regard and what we always utter in the prayer that He
taught us: “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if
you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.” (Matthew 6:14-
15)
In this present time, so many of us need healing in body and spirit. Our society needs very deep
healing, not just in our physical illness but, there is also a need to look at our spiritual necessities.
God answers this by His immense love. In return, our response must always be to get up and
serve, to proclaim the Gospel, to love our neighbor.

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