To Love God Is to Love Those He Loves

One of the great concerns of the Law of Moses is the protection of those who are vulnerable.

Throughout the Law, God takes particular care to protect people who cannot easily protect themselves. He commands the Israelites not to mistreat foreigners living among them. They must not wrong widows or orphans. They must not take advantage of the poor simply because they are poor.

And God reminds the Israelites why this should matter to them: they themselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. They knew what it meant to be vulnerable, to have little power, and to depend upon the mercy of others.

In today's first reading, God gives a particularly striking example.

If someone takes another person's cloak as a pledge for a debt, he must return it before sunset. Why? Because that cloak may be the only covering the poor man has to keep himself warm at night.

The debt may be legitimate. The obligation to repay it may be real. But none of that gives the lender the right to disregard the humanity of the person who owes him money.

The debt may be real. So is the person who owes it.

God is concerned not merely with whether an agreement is legally enforceable, but with how we treat one another.

And notice whom God singles out for protection: the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, and the poor. These were people who often had little power or influence in ancient society. They were precisely the people whom others could most easily overlook or exploit.

Yet God does not overlook them.

In fact, God goes even further. He warns that if these vulnerable people are mistreated and cry out to him, he will hear their cries.

God does not merely suggest that his people should be compassionate. He makes it clear that he himself is the defender of those who are mistreated.

Every human person has dignity and worth, regardless of wealth, social standing, nationality, ability, or usefulness to society.

And this brings us directly to today's Gospel.

When Jesus is asked which commandment in the Law is the greatest, he gives an answer that is both remarkably simple and extraordinarily demanding.

First, he says, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."

And then he adds a second commandment: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus tells us that the whole Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.

That's it.

We sometimes think of the Law of Moses as a complicated collection of ancient rules and regulations, many of which seem strange or outdated to us today.

But Jesus tells us what lies at the heart of it all.

Love God. Love your neighbor.

And these are not two unrelated obligations. They are inseparably connected.

If we truly love God, then we must also love those whom God loves.

And whom does God love?

Every single human person.

Not merely the people we like. Not merely the people who agree with us. Not merely those who are kind to us or who make our lives easier.

God loves the people who irritate us.

He loves the people who inconvenience us.

He loves the people we would rather avoid.

He even loves the people who hate us.

And if we are going to love God, we must learn to love them too.

Jesus makes this point especially clear elsewhere in the Gospel, in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Samaritans and the Jews had a long history of hostility toward one another. Yet when Jesus wants to teach us what it means to love our neighbor, he chooses a Samaritan as the example of someone who acts with genuine compassion.

The Samaritan does not stop to ask whether the wounded man belongs to his people. He does not ask whether the man shares his beliefs or whether helping him will be convenient.

He sees someone in need, and he responds with mercy.

But notice something else. His mercy costs him something. He gives his time, his attention, his money, and his willingness to be inconvenienced.

Love is not merely a pleasant feeling or a general sense of goodwill. It is something we do.

Our obligation to love our neighbor does not depend on whether that person is particularly lovable. It depends on the fact that the person is loved by God.

Of course, this does not mean that we must approve of everything another person does. Nor does it mean that we cannot recognize wrongdoing or insist upon justice.

But it does mean that we can never stop recognizing another person's humanity.

We can oppose someone's actions without denying his dignity. We can uphold the law without abandoning compassion. We can disagree, even profoundly, without forgetting that the person standing before us is someone whom God created and loves.

In the second reading, St. Paul praises the Thessalonians because they became imitators of him and of the Lord.

They received the Gospel even amid suffering, and their faith became an example to believers throughout Macedonia and Achaia. Their witness spread far beyond their own community.

That is what happens when faith becomes something more than words. The Gospel takes root in our lives, and others begin to see its effects.

We are called to imitate the love that God has shown us.

God did not create us because we could offer him something he lacked. He created us out of love. And even when we turned away from him through sin, he did not abandon us.

Instead, he sent his own Son to redeem us.

That is the love we are called to imitate. A generous love. A selfless love. A sacrificial love that seeks the good of another, even when doing so costs us something.

And yet, two thousand years later, we still struggle with this.

In fact, one of the ways we justify mistreating other people is by finding language that makes it easier to disregard their humanity.

We describe an unborn child as nothing more than a "clump of cells," as though being small, dependent, or not yet fully developed makes that life less valuable. Words such as zygote and fetus are legitimate biological descriptions. The problem comes when we use such descriptions to suggest that the developing human being does not matter.

We reduce immigrants to the label "illegals," as though a person's immigration status tells us everything we need to know about his dignity or how he deserves to be treated. Certainly, nations have the right to establish and enforce immigration laws. But a person's legal status does not erase his humanity, nor does it release us from our obligation to treat him with dignity.

We speak of people with severe disabilities as having such a poor quality of life that their lives are somehow less worth living. We can begin to treat dependence upon others as though it diminishes the value of the person.

We describe the elderly as burdens, particularly when they can no longer care for themselves or contribute to society in the ways they once did.

And we sometimes speak of criminals as though their crimes have erased their humanity, as though someone who has committed a terrible act is no longer worthy of compassion or dignity.

Certainly, wrongdoing must have consequences. Justice matters. Those who commit crimes must be held accountable, and society has a legitimate responsibility to protect the innocent.

But even someone who has committed a terrible crime remains a human being, created in the image and likeness of God.

We can condemn the crime without denying the humanity of the criminal.

Indeed, we must.

After all, Christ did not come into the world to save only innocent people. He came to save sinners.

And that includes every one of us.

None of these examples means that we must abandon moral judgment, ignore legitimate laws, or pretend that difficult questions have easy answers.

But they do mean that we cannot allow our judgments about someone's circumstances, choices, or actions to obscure the fundamental dignity of the person.

Because once we begin thinking of people primarily as problems, burdens, threats, or inconveniences, it becomes much easier to justify treating them as though they do not matter.

But they do matter.

Every one of them.

The unborn child matters. The immigrant matters. The person with a disability matters. The elderly person who can no longer care for himself matters. The prisoner matters.

And so does the person who is difficult, unpleasant, or simply inconvenient.

Their dignity does not come from their usefulness to us. It does not depend on their independence, their legal status, their abilities, or even their moral character.

Their dignity comes from the fact that they are human beings, created in the image and likeness of God.

And that dignity cannot be taken away.

Jesus makes this even more striking in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, when he describes the final judgment.

He identifies himself with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned.

And he tells us that whatever we do for the least of his brothers, we do for him.

Think about what that means.

When we encounter someone who is hungry, Christ calls us to recognize him.

When we encounter a stranger, Christ calls us to recognize him.

When we encounter someone who is sick or imprisoned, Christ calls us to recognize him.

The way we treat people who are vulnerable matters to Christ personally.

This is why the commandments to love God and to love our neighbor cannot be separated.

We cannot sincerely profess our love for the God who creates and sustains every human life while treating some of those lives as though they are disposable.

We cannot praise God for his mercy toward us while refusing to show mercy to others.

And we cannot claim to imitate Christ while ignoring the people who are most in need of our compassion.

But perhaps the most difficult part of today's readings is recognizing that we all have people whom we find easier to dismiss.

It is easy to recognize failures of compassion in others, particularly when their opinions differ from our own. It is much harder to recognize when we are guilty of the same thing.

Whose needs do we resent? Whose suffering do we explain away? Whose dignity do we readily defend, and whose dignity do we find reasons to overlook?

We may have very different opinions about the problems facing our society and how best to address them. But none of those disagreements gives us permission to deny another person's humanity.

And this applies not only to great moral questions facing society, but to the ordinary encounters of our daily lives.

It applies to the elderly relative who repeats the same story for the fifth time.

It applies to the struggling family whose problems we think they should have avoided.

It applies to the person who needs our help when we already have more than enough to do.

And it applies to the person whose beliefs, behavior, or choices we find objectionable.

These are the moments when our love for God becomes something more than words.

After all, the poor man in the first reading still needs his cloak when the sun goes down. It does him little good for us to affirm his dignity while leaving him to freeze.

And the same is true of those who are vulnerable today. Our recognition of their dignity must lead us to act.

That might mean supporting a frightened mother who does not know how she will care for her unborn child. It might mean helping a family overwhelmed by the needs of a disabled or elderly relative. It might mean treating an immigrant with compassion even when we disagree about immigration policy.

Sometimes it is something as simple as giving our time and attention to someone we would rather avoid.

The challenge of today's readings is not merely to agree that every person has dignity. Most of us would readily say that we believe that.

The challenge is to live as though we actually believe it.

Jesus does not ask us merely to love the people who are easy to love.

He asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

To love God is to love those whom he loves. And there is no human being whom God does not love.

Even the one we would rather overlook.

Even the one who has nothing to offer us in return.

Even the one who needs our cloak tonight.

And the God we profess to love still hears that person's cry.