The greatest commandment and the maximum happiness

Readings:
• Ex 22:20-26
• Psa 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
• 1 Thess 1:5c-10
• Mt 22:34-40

“When you buy an automobile,” wrote Archbishop Fulton Sheen in Remade for Happiness (Ignatius Press, 2014; orig. 1946), “the manufacturer gives you a set of instructions.” Those instructions cover tire pressure, the type of engine oil, and proper fuel. “He has nothing against you by giving you these instructions as God had nothing against you in giving you commandments.”

God wants us, Sheen wrote, to “get the maximum happiness out of life. Such is the purpose of His commandments.”

Unfortunately, we can be tempted to view the commandments of God in skewed and faulty ways. It is common to view the commandments as restrictive and meant to keep us from enjoying life. They are viewed as authoritarian, even as thinly disguised forms of punishment.

Another way, common during the time of Christ, is to see the commandments as external measuring sticks that control every aspect of life, with an emphasis on external acts, to the point of losing sight of the intimate, internal goal they point us toward. The first approach emphasizes a false freedom, and the second emphasizes a shallow conformity.

The Law and the commandments—all 613 of them—were at the heart of Judaism, and the question put to Jesus, on the surface, was not unusual. Yet that question—“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”—was not asked out of desire to learn, but to test. In fact, the word “tested” is the same word used to describe what the devil sought to do when Jesus went into the desert: to tempt him (Matt 4:1).

The question was abstract, even academic, but the response by Jesus was direct and personal: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” In asking the question, the lawyer revealed himself to be duplicitous and devoid of love, while Jesus, true Teacher and Lord, demonstrated his firm love for that man, just as he has demonstrated his love for each of us.

The first part of Jesus’ response is from the Shema, the central Jewish declaration of faith: “Hear [shema], O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!” (Dt 6:4-9; cf. 11:13-21; Num 15:37-41). Observant Jews recited the Shema each morning and evening, and Jesus would have prayed it regularly. Therefore, those listening would not have disagreed with Jesus’ answer, for to be a Jew meant loving and fearing God, and therefore keeping his commandments (Dt 5:29).

However, they surely didn’t expect the second part of his response: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” The two loves—of God and of neighbor—can be distinguished, but cannot be separated. They are the two foundations upon which true religion, real communion, and authentic morality are established.

To love God with the whole heart, noted St. Cyril of Alexandria, “is the cause of every good”, and so the first commandment “prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second.” Loving God involves giving ourselves completely to him and allowing his will to be shown in and through us.

“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus told the disciples in the Upper Room, “love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35; see Catechism, par 1823).

Such is real freedom in God, and true conformity to the image of the Son of God (Rom 8:29).

(Editor’s note: This “Opening the Word” column was published originally in the October 26, 2014 edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

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