Fr. JC Maximilian

Six hundred and thirteen. That is the number of laws or commandments that you can find in the first five books of the Bible, what we call the Pentateuch. At the time of Jesus there was a lot of debate among the Jewish teachers as to which of these commandments were the most important, so this is the question that they ask Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. Quite an overwhelming task, to pick one law, out of 613, as being the most important. Of course, Jesus is up to the task, even if His answer may not have been what the Pharisees were expecting.

The Pharisees probably not surprised at all when Jesus said that the greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” However, Jesus immediately adds, as one being like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This probably puzzled the Pharisees a great deal. Why? Not because they did not think that it was important to love their neighbors. They most certainly did show compassion on their neighbors. However, when Jesus said that love of neighbor was like love of God, He seemed to be putting it on par with the love of God. They wanted Him to give them one commandment which was more important than all the others, and Jesus gave them two.

Two is certainly a lot less that 613, but it still seems to allow for debating over which of the two is the most important. Today, this debate is often labeled as whether we have a vertical view of our Christian faith, or a horizontal view of faith.

The vertical view says that our faith has to do primarily with worshiping God, and anything that gets in the way with that needs to be removed, as a false idol. Such a view says that when we gather on Sunday to celebrate the Mass it is not a celebration of our humanity, or to be lifted up emotionally, or to experience fellowship. Rather, the reason we come together to celebrate Mass is to be still and know that God is still present among us, and to give Him thanks because we owe everything to Him. Of course it is true that all that we have is from God, therefore as a matter of justice it is fitting for us to give God thanks and praise. God should be the center of our lives, and Jesus Himself said that worship of God is our highest duty.

Case closed? Not so fast the proponents of the horizontal view of our Christian faith say. They point out that clearly Jesus was a friend of the poor and the oppressed. They note that Jesus often strongly challenged both the political and religious establishments of His time for too often not showing compassion to the poor, the sick, and the oppressed. If we are going to call ourselves Christians, then we need to do as Jesus did and fight for social justice.

Which of these two views of Christian faith is correct? Which of these two commandments – love of God, and love of neighbor – is most important? Jesus witnesses that both of these views are correct in what they affirm, but they are both wrong in what they ignore or deny. To be an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ we must be neither vertical nor horizontal but rather people of the crossroad. We need to live at where the vertical and the horizontal intersect, the crossroad. After all, we are People of the Cross.

Worship of God IS primary. However, if our worship of God has no consequences in our lives, if it does not cause us to live a NEW LIFE in Christ, then our worship is a hypocrisy. At the same time, if our service of others is not performed because of our love of God but because it gives us some type of noble and uplifting feeling or because it fits in with some human ideology that we endorse, then it is not a true service. It is mere philanthropy and not Christian love. Such philanthropy often leads to a de-humanization of those being served because it fails to recognize the fullness of the humanity of the poor or sick or oppressed. They are seen more as a cause, and not as the children of God, made in His image and likeness, that they have spiritual needs as well as physical ones.

Jesus lived at the crossroad, where the vertical and the horizontal meet. He also died there, on the Cross. As His followers we must also live, and die, at the crossroad.

This can seem like a very overwhelming task. How can we love this way, the way of the crossroad? The truth is, if it was just left up to us, we could not love as we should. We are too limited. We get tired and frustrated and impatient, and when that happens we do not love as we should. The only way to love at the crossroad is to remember that “God is Love.” As St. John says in one of his letters, it is not so much that we have loved God, but rather that God has first loved us. The great commandment is a confirmation that God has first loved us in such a way that it is now supremely possible for us to love Him and our neighbors as He demands us to love. We need to reflect on our experiences in everyday life and see the love of God right now, right here in our lives. We must relish in God’s love and be completely grateful for that Divine love. It will call to mind the times when because of our sinfulness we have been alienated from God, while at the same time filling us with the joy that comes from the Mercy of God who forgives us. Filled and conscious of God’s love for us, we will be able to love God with all our hearts, all our soul, and all of our mind because nothing else will fill us. And filled with the Love of God we will be imitators of Christ, loving all those around us as our brothers and sisters, all God’s children. It all happens at the Crossroad.