4 October 2021
Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi
Jesus is tested once again, this time by a scholar of the law who wants to know how to inherit eternal life. It is a difficult question, as if Jesus says you must love God with everything you have, the scholar could point out that there is more, and vice versa. Yet Jesus sums up the whole Law in two commands of God: loving God with your whole being, and loving your neighbor as yourself, which impresses the scholar. How is it that these laws, should we strive to abide by them, dispose us in such a way that we would inherit eternal life? Consider what sin did in the beginning: it divided humanity against God in mankind’s failure to love God, and divided man and woman from one another, failing likewise to love one another. As it was a failure to love God and their fellow man that lead humanity to death, so it will be the love of both that will lead to life. Too, if it is eternal life that we hope for and Heaven for which we strive, how do we expect to exist in eternal, loving communion with God and the redeemed if we cannot begin to love Him and those He desires to save in the here-and-now? We are commanded to love God and neighbor now, that we might be prepared to love them perfectly and eternally later.
But all who desire Heaven desire communion with God; we often forget that Heaven will not be a private island with ourselves and the Trinity, but rather we will be with others as well. “…who is my neighbor?” the scholar asks, wondering who exactly he must love as he loves himself. By the end of the parable he realizes that one’s neighbor is any that are in need: in other words, not merely those who love him but those in need of his own care, for in the end we are, in our sins, the victim lying on the roadside near death, and Jesus is the Good Samaritan that binds up our wounds, bears us along to His Church, and gives us the Sacraments by which to provide for our every spiritual need until His return. Thus, in addition to the ancient command to love one another as we would love ourselves, He gives His great command: “…love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another,” (John 13:34).