“How one [Saint Peter] by prayer raised to life Tabitha, a woman good in needlework.”
Gospel Reading : Matthew 22:34-40
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sad′ducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
What do the Fathers say?
St JEROME. The Pharisees having been themselves already confuted (in the matter of the denarius), and now seeing their adversaries also overthrown, should have taken warning to attempt no further deceit against Him; but hate and jealousy are the parents of impudence.
The Pharisees and Sadducees, thus foes to one another, unite in one common purpose to tempt Jesus.
PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Or the Pharisees meet together, that their numbers may silence Him whom their reasonings could not confute; thus, while they array numbers against Him, showing that truth failed them; they said among themselves, Let one speak for all, and all speak, through one, so if He prevail, the victory may seem to belong to all; if He be overthrown, the defeat may rest with Him alone; so it follows, And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him.
But the Lord so answers him, as at once to lay bare the hypocrisy of his enquiry, Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love, not ‘fear,’ for to love is more than to fear; to fear belongs to slaves, to love belongs to sons; fear is in compulsion, love in freedom.
Whoso serves God in fear escapes punishment, but has not the reward of righteousness because he did well unwillingly through fear. God does not desire to be served servilely by men as a master, but to be loved as a father, for that reason He has given the spirit of adoption to men.
But to love God with the whole heart, is to have the heart inclined to the love of no one thing more than of God.
To love God again with the whole soul is to have the mind fixed upon the truth, and to be firm in the faith.
For the love of the heart and the love of the soul are different. The first is in a way carnal, that we should love God even with our flesh, which we cannot do unless we first depart from the love of the things of this world.
The love of the heart is felt in the heart, but the love of the soul is not felt, but is perceived because it consists in a judgment of the soul. For he who believes that all good is in God, and that without Him is no good, he loves God with his whole soul.
But to love God with the whole mind, is to have all the faculties open and unoccupied for Him. He only loves God with his whole mind, whose intellect ministers to God, whose wisdom is employed about God, whose thoughts travail in the things of God, and whose memory holds the things which are good.
St AUGUSTINE. You are commanded to love God with all your heart, —with all your soul, with all your mind, that all your thoughts, that your whole life and that your whole understanding may be given to Him from whom you have what you give. Thus He has left no part of our life which may justly be unfilled of Him, or give place to the desire after any other final good; but if aught else present itself for the soul’s love, it should be absorbed into that channel in which the whole current of love runs. For man is then the most perfect when his whole life tends towards the life unchangeable, and clings to it with the whole purpose of his soul.
But if even yourself you ought not to love for your own sake, but because of Him in whom is the rightful end of your love, let not another man be displeased that you love even him for God’s sake. Whoso then rightly loves his neighbour, ought to endeavour with him that he also with his whole heart love God.
Since there are two commandments, the love of God and the love of our neighbour, on which hang the Law and the Prophets, not without reason does Scripture put one for both; sometimes the love of God; as in that, We know that all things work together for good to them that love God; (Rom. 8:28.) and sometimes the love of our neighbour; as in that, All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself. (Gal. 5:14.) And that because if a man love his neighbour, it follows therefrom that he loves God also; for it is the selfsame affection by which we love God, and by which we love our neighbour, save that we love God for Himself, but ourselves and our neighbour for God’s sake.
But since the Divine substance is more excellent and higher than our nature, the command to love God is distinct from that to love our neighbour. But if by yourself, you understand your whole self, that is both your soul and your body, and in like manner of your neighbour, there is no sort of things to be loved omitted in these commands. the love of God goes first, and the rule thereof is so set out to us as to make all other loves centre in that, so that nothing seems said of loving yourself. But then follows, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself, so that love of yourself is not omitted.
Bible readings from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Second Catholic Edition, copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Quotes of the Fathers from
Thomas Aquinas’ Catena Aurea Translated by St John Henry Newman
Artwork ex Wikimedia Commons