October 25, 2020
We remain in the context of the fulmination between the Pharisees, masters of the Law, and Jesus. The Pharisees, in different ways, with additional questions, put Jesus to the test; they try to put Him in difficulty, to deceive Him, to have some charge of accusation with which to bring Him to trial.
In today’s passage (Mt 22:34-40), the subject is again the interpretation of the Torah, and the question concerns more specifically the commandments: which is the greatest commandment?
The question, as they put, presupposes that behind it, there is an entire thought, a theology so that among all the commandments present in the Law, there is one crucial, exactly “great.” Then there are much less critical, less significant than the first. And the great commandment, of course, cannot be other than that concerning God, His being the only God, to be loved with one’s whole self, first and above everything else.
When a person did that, he observed the heart of the Law and could feel pretty good.
Jesus does not deny this vision of things, this “theology,” but goes further and changes the criterion. It is evident that God is one and that He is loved above everything, but that is not all; it is not the only great commandment. There is another “great” commandment, which, not surprisingly, Jesus defines as “similar” (Mt 22:39) to the other, and that does not concern God, but the neighbor.
And it is like the first not just because it is equally important, but because it has the same subject, namely, love.
We could say, therefore, that the great commandment is not one, but there are two, and it is as if the first, by itself, were incomplete.
That means that it is not enough to love God; it would be much simpler, and everything would be concentrated and used up in worship, in observance, in prayer.
Instead, it is not enough to live the duty of loving God and then not to do the same for the love of neighbor.
God demands that the brother be loved with the same love, the same recognition, the same respect that one has for Him. Both are commandments so that it cannot be said that to love God is a commandment while to love the neighbor is an exhortation, a counsel.
That, Jesus says, is not optional; it is not left to personal sensibility, to the culture, to each one’s possibilities: no, it is a commandment, and it is for everyone.
It is as if God Himself did not accept a love given to Him, which then does not become love given to the other, to the brother.
If this commandment is second, it is not because it is of lesser importance, but because, in some way, it derives from the first. Love for the other arises from an authentic relationship with God, from a sincere listening, from a correct mode of living worship, of observing the Law. Whoever loves God must arrive at loving the neighbor.
In Matthew, a few chapters before the one we are reading (Mt 15:1-9), we find a vehement rebuke by Jesus to the Pharisees and the Scribes, who criticized Him because His disciples were transgressing traditions by eating without first washing their hands.
But Jesus, responding, says this to them: “But you say, ‘Whoever says to father or mother, “Any support you might have had from me is dedicated to God,” need not honor his father” (Mt 15:5-6).
That is, He criticizes them for falling into this illusion, that of thinking that loving God is in some way an absolute that excludes the love of neighbor, falling into the error that there is a love for God that does not pass through the love of neighbor.
Whoever pretends to love only God, whoever uses this to avoid getting their hands dirty, in the end, comes to love no one, neither God nor neighbor, but only himself, in an evil way, closed in his egoism.
And Jesus will go even further, in chapter 25 (Mt 25:31-45), when in the parable of the final judgment He will say that whoever will have loved his brother, in some way will have loved Him, will have loved God. The two commandments are one great commandment.
