What Must We Do?
The heart of Christian morality is the desire to love God fully, completely, and to love others as unique reflections of God’s love. We can see an analogy in the love we must have in the love that good parents have for their children. Parents do not try to find the minimal amount of love they must have to be good parents. Parents continually give their love because they know their children need their love. Parents do not love their children because they are afraid that if they do not love their children God will punish them. Parents love their children because they are their children. Parents love their children for whom they are, expressions of love, loving them back. Parents do not love their children due to their looks, talents, or intelligence. They love them because they are their children. God loves us because we are His children. (Msgr. Joseph Pellegrino)
Love Pure and Simple
In his book The Devil You Don’t Know, Fr. Louis Cameli makes the important observation that as Christians we believe that not only has God made all creation from nothing (ex nihilo) but also from love and now, through Christ, God is summoning all creation back to the fullness of love. Where the omnipotence of God is revealed in creation from nothing; the heart of God is made known in creation from and for love. In Christ, we encounter God as love and we learn that the dynamic of true and authentic love stands at the very foundation of all creation and even the Creator himself.
With this awareness, the answer of our Lord to the question of the Pharisees’ “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” takes an added meaning. “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt. 22:35-37) (Fr. Michael Cummins)