In times when the word "love" is often used in an ill-defined way, it is tempting to assimilate the teaching of the Gospel at Mass today (30th Sunday of the Year):
You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.... You must love your neighbour as yourself.
to the mantra of those who advocate for same-sex marriage:
We should be free to marry whoever we love.
Among Christians in general, the ability to answer this incorrect assimilation is undermined if there is no clear definition of what is meant by the term "love", and so there is a slide into an almost passive acceptance of same-sex unions through a lack of confidence as to how to argue against them.
The parish newsletter in the parish where I go to Mass opened with the following commentary on the words of the Gospel:
We are all surely familiar with these words. The question is, do we understand them, and do we live them? Before we can consider the three elements of this summary of the law (love of God, neighbour and self) we need to understand what love is, for we often mistake other things for love. Love is not just a feeling, though feelings certainly form part of it. Nor is it mere instinct or attraction, though these too play a part. Love, ultimately, is an act of the will – a choice. A choice for the good of another person, that takes priority over our own feelings, and is made without any thought to self -interest or personal gain. Put like this it sounds daunting, impossible even, but this kind of love is something we grow into, with God’s help, and our lives on earth are principally a preparation and training ground for the life of perfect unalloyed love which is heaven.
The full newsletter, with its further commentary on the Gospel, can be found here - note that it will not be a permanent link, as the parish website only keeps recent newsletters.
The homily I heard at Mass (from a priest covering from a neighbouring parish) was also interesting. In answering the question as to why it was love of God that was the first commandment, rather than love of neighbour, Father suggested that it was our need to experience love first that then enabled us to act in love towards others. As we come to appreciate and know just how much God has loved us, before we have loved him, then we grow in our ability to love others.
But these words also have a resonance at the ordinary human level which Father did not develop. Young people who do not have an experience of love in its true sense from their family backgrounds in their turn find it much harder (though it is not impossible) to love their neighbour, and to love a spouse and children in marriage. And we see this consequence in our societies today.
The commentary from the parish newsletter came to its conclusion with the following:
It is easy to overlook the last part: ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Loving ourselves means accepting ourselves as God’s beloved son or daughter, and seeking our own good just as God does – that ‘good’ being a share in his life for eternity. Cut adrift from God and the notion of absolute truth and absolute values, many people in society today feel that it is necessary to affirm every choice as equally ‘good’. But God, as a good and loving father knows that not every choice is good for us. It is because God loves us, that he wants us to choose what is good whilst respecting our freedom to make good and bad choices. He affirms us but not every choice we make! Since God loves us, we can and must love ourselves. The three loves Jesus speaks of – God, neighbour, and self – are not in competition, for our supreme good, that of our neighbour, and God’s will, all coincide.
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