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Manila Bulletin

Opinion

The second is like it

Opinion

The second is like it

By Manila Bulletin

REFLECTIONS TODAY

As Christians, we are called to make the love of God and love of neighbor as our moral compass. If these two are kept apart, our moral compass will surely malfunction. Jesus’ followers uphold the in-separability of these commandments. On the one hand, our love for God is from where our love for others springs up. On the other hand, our love for God is lived out concretely through our love for others.

Today’s Gospel tells of these two greatest commandments: the love of God (Dt 6:5) and the love of neighbor (Lv 19:18). The passage accentuates the inseparability of these two, with the use of the Greek adjective homoia, meaning “like.”

The second greatest commandment is “like” the first according to Matthew’s account, which we can-not find in the account of the parallel passage in the Gospel of Mark (12:28-34). Do we take the love of God and of neighbor to be our moral compass? Do we uphold their inseparability? Do we concretize our love of God by being kinder to the people around us?

Gospel • Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law, tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Source: “366 Days with the Lord 2024,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.

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