Word X. On the Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Today’s Gospel begins thus: “«One of the Pharisees, a lawyer, tempting Jesus Christ, asked Him: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him: love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets»” (Mt 22:35-46).

The lawyer of the Pharisees asks Christ, the eternal Lawgiver, questions, yet without acknowledging Him as such: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? — A most important question, for it is utterly necessary for all of us to know its right answer and keep it, since a man’s eternal life depends on the keeping of it—and the Lord resolved it in the most positive way: love God and your neighbor (Mt 22:37,39). But in putting so weighty a question to Christ, the Jewish lawyer does not believe in Jesus Christ as the true Lawgiver, acknowledging Him only as a teacher. Therefore, at the end of today’s Gospel, the Lord asks him and the Pharisees: What do you think about Christ? Whose Son is He? The Pharisees answered, He is the Son of David. He said to them: how then does David, by inspiration, call Him Lord? If David calls Him Lord, how is He his son? And no one was able to answer Him a word, and from that day no one dared to question Him any more (Mt 22:42,46).

So decisively did the Lord’s righteous word act upon the Pharisees that, struck by the manifest truth, they no longer dared to question Him. But our present-day learned Pharisees—officials, professors, teachers in higher and secondary schools, Tolstoyans—are they persuaded by the manifest truth of the Gospel and the countless miracles of Christ the Savior that He is truly the Lord, the Creator and Savior of the world? — No, they are not persuaded. Why? Because they have gone mad, have believed the lies of Tolstoy and of the Jews; if they have believed in Baal, as though he were God, can they possibly believe in the true God? No, because the evil one has darkened the eyes of their soul. But the Lord will come in His fearsome glory at His second coming, and then all will believe—but it will already be too late. Then there will be retribution, not debate.

Now let us turn to the lawyer’s question: which is the greatest commandment in the law? The Lord answers: love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.

A wholly natural, just, and vital commandment: love God and your neighbor. The Lord loved us before we loved Him: He loved us before our very being; He thought of us—and created us; had He not thought of us, we would not exist. And how many blessings has He granted us, in creating us? — without number; pass in thought through the time from your own conception until now; go over, as far as you are able, all that you have made use of and still make use of, of God’s gifts, natural and everyday—air, food and drink, the life-giving sun, your place in society, the development of your abilities, your circle of kin and good acquaintances, friends, and so forth; but above all, remember how many priceless gifts you have received through faith in Christ; these truly are without number; and after all this—tell me, do you feel a heartfelt need to believe in God, to love and thank Him, to repent before Him of all your sins, by which you offend Him every moment? — The Lord has loved us with an eternal, righteous, and holy love, and, having given us so many blessings in this present life, He has prepared for us an endless life, full of countless priceless joys in the age to come, together with the angels and the holy servants of God. Tell me, after this, how ought we to love Him? Precisely, with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind.

And what of us? Sometimes we do not even wish to understand how boundless His love and goodness toward us are. We have loved ourselves beyond measure, the adulterous and sinful world, our own flesh and its fleeting pleasures; we have clung with our hearts to every vanity. Foolish that we are, we love what we ought to despise, and do not love the Lord, our own eternal life, our Savior, our all-bountiful Provider, our Giver of food and of light. We have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living water, and have dug for ourselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water. This is why we suffer misfortune in every way, and there is no end to our misfortunes.

What chiefly hinders us from loving God, from having complete devotion to Him? Precisely our self-love, our attachment to earthly, so-called goods. Therefore the chief commandment is our own self-denial. — Who wants to go after Me, turn away from yourself and take your cross and go after me (Lk 9:23). To His Apostles He commanded: take with you neither purse, nor bread, nor copper in your belts, and do not have two coats (Mk 6:8), that they might have attachment to nothing, but give themselves with their whole heart to God and His providence, and strive toward heaven and toward our eternal fatherland, and care above all for the salvation of human souls. And they loved God with their whole heart, and gave over their whole life to Him, even unto death, suffering for Him with joy.

Here, then, is a model of love for God and neighbor. Let us strive, dear brothers and sisters, to love Him in this same way. Amen.