There is this discussion that I’ve had with quite a number of people over the years, and it always seems to start the same way. It usually begins when we’re talking about why we can or can’t do something relating to the liturgy, or in preparation for certain sacraments like Confirmation or Marriage. And the conversation usually has the statement: “You know, the Church just has way too many rules!” I’ll admit, the Church does have a lot of rules. But the Church is an institution with rules, not an institution of rules. It’s interesting though that in our civil society when something happens we don’t like, we don’t hesitate to say “There ought to be a law!” But when it comes to our faith, which should be the one thing central to us in our lives, it seems that many people resist the direction and guidance that’s given to us by the Church.
It might help us to understand that the laws of the Church are in place for much of the same reasons that we have civil law. The law is meant to be an aid to society in the fulfillment of its goals. Law is meant to bring stability and a sense of order to a society, and help to protect the personal rights of people. The Canon Law of the Church helps the Christian faithful to be what it is meant to be, and to carry out its mission in the world. In the Church, leaders need to be chosen, sacraments celebrated, the Word of God preached, all with proper administration. If it didn’t have that, there would be chaos. The overall purpose of Church Law is to give general direction of the believing community: not just to have people obey its rules, but to lead people to a virtuous life, and eventually, eternal life.
The purpose of the entire Code of Canon Law can be summed up in one statement that is included in the final law of the Code: “the salvation of souls, which must always be the supreme law in the Church, is to be kept before one’s eyes.” It challenges the Church to strive for love as its goal.
This is just what Jesus says when he is asked by the scholar of the law: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He doesn’t name any of the Ten Commandments; he summarizes the entire teaching of the Old Covenant—all 613 commandments of the Jewish law—into one word: Love. Love of God and love of neighbor. He begins with the most beloved and recited prayer of Judaism called the Shemá, which means “to hear,” taken from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
When the Pharisees Jesus this question, they weren’t really interested in the truth. All they are interested in is to gain the upper hand over Jesus. The Pharisees wanted to trap Jesus thinking they could trick him into making a statement where they can accuse him of abolishing the Law.
But remember – Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. The Law was extremely important to Jesus. The Law was a precious gift from God because it communicated his will to us. It wasn’t about making sure people followed the rules. It was concerned with a spirit of compassion that should be shown to everyone – especially those who could not defend themselves. The most obvious of the powerless were the widows and the orphans because they had no one to stand up for them.
Besides mentioning the needs of widows, orphans and the poor as people to whom we owe love and justice, the first reading from the Book of Exodus makes specific mention of aliens, or foreigners. God tells the Israelites to remember when they were aliens in Egypt. They were to treat others as they wished they would have been treated. We all know that immigration is a hot topic at this time in the United States as well as in many other nations of the world. But this isn’t about the politics of illegal immigration; it’s about the dignity of the human condition.
Believers are to follow the example of God as it’s represented in this reading. This means we should see immigrants with the eyes of God, who created each and every one of us, and each and every one of them with equal dignity. We were created in the image and likeness of God, and although we often distort this image, we are also precious in the eyes of God – all of us, including the immigrant. The key is to get away from seeing immigrants as “them” and begin to see them as “we.”
The last line of this Old Testament reading is the key to its message. “If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate.” In other words, we are to imitate God and be compassionate also. This is just what Jesus is saying in the Gospel reading. Jesus is interpreting the Law of God in a different way. The Pharisees looked at the letter of the law first, and strict obedience to it. But Jesus is saying that if we only looked at following the rules, we would not know how to love.
The “love” Jesus speaks of is not necessarily a feeling but rather faithfulness to a covenant, a matter of willing and doing. I’ve heard it said that “Love is not a feeling. Love is an act of the will that takes over even when the other is unlovable.” So the primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. We may get these warm feelings inside us when we consider the love we share with God, but these warm feelings must be supported by a conscious and daily commitment to our neighbor.
Notice that in this Gospel reading that when Jesus answered the question, he did not say that the second commandment, love your neighbor as yourself, was less important than to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. He said the second is like it. Jesus’ command was unique in that he put these two laws – love of God and love of neighbor – on the same level and defined them as mutually interdependent. You can’t have one without the other. If we truly love God, then love of neighbor comes naturally. And we show our love for God by how we love our neighbor. If you have one without the other then it is unbalanced and not true love.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus understood the love of God and neighbor to be the foundation of the law, not its entire content. But without love for God and neighbor the other commandments lose their meaning.
Every once in a while, we need to take a look at how we see the commandments of God and the laws of the Church. If we see them as just rules we need to follow, then we completely miss the need for them and we are blind to the understanding of the mission of the Church, which as I mentioned earlier is the salvation of souls. But if we love first, as Jesus says, then we shouldn’t need to worry about all the rules, laws, and regulations, because they will naturally fall in place. We shouldn’t have to think about whether or not we comply, because when we love as God loves, then the commandments become second nature to us.
So how do I love God? By loving my neighbor. And who is my neighbor? The poor, the orphan, the widow, and the immigrant are just a few. It’s not necessarily the person sitting next to you or the person living next to you. It’s not just your best friend or someone you work with. Your neighbor is the one whom society rejects: the outcast, the unwanted, the unloved.
We have to love first – because God loved us first.