“But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together. And one of them, a doctor of the law, asked him, tempting him: ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him: ‘’Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.’ This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.’”
Truth, in her magnificent angelic chariot: “He ascended upon the cherubim, and he flew; he flew upon the wings of the winds” (Psalm 17:11), had silenced the impotent footsoldiers of falsehood in the Sadducees, and rather than dissipating or turning on each other, as false teaching always does, the Pharisees mount one final assault: “He should send an army against them, to destroy and root out the strength of Israel, and the remnant of Jerusalem, and to take away the memory of them from that place” (1 Machabees 3:35). This was done by sending one excellent lawyer into the battlefield of debate to attempt to attain the victory for the Pharisees: “Choose a man of you, and let him come down and fight hand to hand. If he be able to fight with me, and kill me, we will be servants to you: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, you shall be servants, and shall serve us” (1 Kings 17:8-9). Now, to ask questions in order to bite at another and not to learn from him is to do as this Pharisee does: “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40), and it is to antagonize rather than to love: “Contend not in words, for it is to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers” (2 Timothy 2:14). The idea behind the question, then, is the thought that all God commands is great: “All thy commands are justice” (Psalm 118:172), and the Pharisees held the lesser commandments on the same plane as the Ten Commandments: “Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24), and therefore they sent this scholar of the law to tempt Him, with the design to reject His answer, no matter what it may be: “And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). Jesus then answers to love God with every fabric of one’s being; where fear dominated in the Law and the people walked in slavery, Jesus throws open the doors of the love of sonship: “For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father)” (Romans 8:15), and God does not desire you to serve Him while scared of His Lordship, but rather joyfully as a Father who is the wind at your back: “From thence, compassing by the shore, we came to Rhegium: and after one day, the south wind blowing, we came the second day to Puteoli” (Acts 28:13). To have your whole heart wrapped on Him then, is to let the garden of your soul be His sanctuary, and His sanctuary alone: “My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed” (Canticle 4:12), your heart being the meeting place between heaven and earth, Bridegroom and bride, God and man: “This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it” (Psalm 131:14). To love Him with your whole soul is to bring your every faculty of your intellect and will under the sweet yoke of devotion, your every action oriented towards love: “I arose up to open to my beloved: my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers were full of the choicest myrrh” (Canticle 5:5). To devote your entire mind to Him is to enjoy the sweet savor of truth, not so much out of a penchant for learning, but to put wood upon the fire of your heart, that it may burn brightly with a true understanding of your Beloved: “And the fire on the altar shall always burn, and the priest shall feed it, putting wood on it every day in the morning” (Leviticus 6:12), and to let your sole wisdom be that of God and His love: “For I judged not myself to know any thing among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). St. Thomas Aquinas, during times of recreation, would leave when the topic would steer from matters of God, surely partly out of boredom, but partly because he simply brought nothing else to the table. O Theophila, how sweet is the taste of love, which painlessly quenches all other desires and draws you into a place where your every thought is fixed on Jesus, nothing in your life reaching outside the fire of His love, for in that is all warmth and goodness: “Who is this that cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?” (Canticle 8:5). You will find the fullness of yourself when your whole life is oriented towards Him, not necessarily in action but in desire, for though Leah brought forth many children, Jacob had a greater desire for the beautiful bride Rachel, who represents the one who gives their every faculty to loving Him and being loved in turn: “And having at length obtained the marriage he wished for, he preferred the love of the latter before the former, and served with him other seven years” (Genesis 29:30). He then says this is the first and greatest commandment, radiant in value and to be seconded to none, for without love for God, everything else becomes dry and barren: “If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth” (John 15:6). There is then a twofold second commandment, to love one’s neighbor as oneself, which first entails a love of oneself: “He that loveth iniquity, hateth his own soul” (Psalm 10:6); “He that is evil to himself, to whom will he be good? And he shall not take pleasure in his goods” (Ecclesiasticus 14:5). Now, every person is your neighbor, by nature of the union of the human family in one common nature: “Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Galatians 6:10), and because of the service they do, the angels are included here: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to minister for them, who shall receive the inheritance of salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14). Every person you meet is a beautiful creation of God, and from love comes either admiration of the beauty of their souls, which can be seen by the spiritual eye: “Thy eyes are as those of doves” (Canticle 1:14), or the desire to see them flourish rather than eat the dirt and muck of earthly things and sin: “My soul hath cleaved to the pavement: quicken thou me according to thy word” (Psalm 118:25). Just as a great man is honored in a statue, God is loved in His people, and in falling madly in love with God, each person becomes a striking reminder of the Beloved: “My dearest, if God hath so loved us; we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11), and so love is the fulfillment of all; the entirety of the Christian walk is a growth in the art of love. To love the Beloved, to love others, to become love, this is the key by which all Sacred Scripture is opened to you: “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him” (Luke 24:27), and thus it is said that on these commandments hang the Law and the prophets.