Made to Love God

In today’s gospel we hear the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” If we only have the bandwidth to do one thing in a day, this needs to be our highest priority. We were made to love God.

This is a reminder to wake up and live our one precious life as God designed. It is only in this awakening that we live with our full sense of purpose. After-all, in the final judgment we will be known by how we loved.

All of religion is about awakening the deepest desire of our heart and directing it toward God; it is about the ordering our love toward that which is most worthy of love. But, Jesus says, a necessary implication of this love of God is compassion for one’s fellow human beings.

It is impossible to love Jesus as God without loving the humanity that he has embraced. As we know Christ Jesus, fully divine and fully human, we realize that the love of God draws us to a love for the human race.

There is logical consistency and spiritual integrity in this greatest commandment. When we give our all, we see how much we are loved. As we accept God’s love for us, we are transformed into creatures of love, capable of love for one another. His love is made complete in us.