"love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt 22:39)
October 2010
This word is found in the Old Testament ( 2). To answer a question, Jesus is part of the prophetic and rabbinic tradition that it was seeking a unifying principle of the Torah, ie the teachings of God in the Bible. Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary, said: "Do not do to your neighbor that is hateful to you, this is the whole law. The rest is just explanation" (3). For the teachers of Judaism
love of neighbor comes to love God who created man in His own image and likeness, so you can not love God without loving her child: this is the real reason of ' love of neighbor, and is "a great and general principle in the law" (4).
Jesus reaffirms this principle, adding that the command to love our neighbor is similar to the first and greatest commandment, which is to love God with all your heart, mind and soul. Stating a similarity between the two commandments Jesus definitively joined them and so will the whole Christian tradition, as the Apostle John tells succinctly: "Who does not love his brother whom he has seen can not love God whom he has not seen" (5).
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself"
Next - makes it clear throughout the Gospels - is every human being, male or female, friend or foe, to whom we owe respect, consideration, esteem. Love of neighbor is universal and personal at the same time. It embraces all of humanity and takes the form of one-who-you-are-close.
But who can give us a heart so big, who can awaken within us a benevolence that make us feel close - Next - even those who are strangers to us, by us beyond self-love to see this self in the other? It 's a gift from God, rather it is the same love of God who "has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (6).
So it is no ordinary love, not just a friendship, not only philanthropic, but that love which is paid since baptism in our hearts: the love that is the life of God, the Blessed Trinity, to which we can participate.
So love is all, but in order to live well one must know the qualities that emerge from the Gospel and Scripture in general and that there seems to summarize some key aspects.
First Jesus who died for all, love all, teaches us that true love should be addressed at all. Not like the love that we live many times, merely human, which has a narrow range: the family, friends, neighbors ... The true love that Jesus wants does not discriminate: both the person does not distinguish between sympathetic antipathy, it is not for the good, the bad, big or small, for this love is not that of my country or a foreigner, that of my church or another, or one of my religion ' other. Everyone loves this love. And so are we to do: to love everyone.
True love, again, love first, do not expect to be loved, as it usually is about human love: you love who loves us. No, true love takes the initiative, as it did when the Father, we being still sinners, and not lovers, has sent his Son to save us.
Therefore: to love all and love first.
And again, true love sees Jesus in every neighbor: "You did it to me," Jesus tells us the final decision (7). And that goes for the good we do, and unfortunately also for evil.
True love loves the friend and the enemy will do him good, pray for him.
Jesus wants to love, which he brought to the earth, becomes mutual: that you love one another, and vice versa, so as to arrive unit.
All these qualities make us love and live better understand the word of life this month.
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Yes, true love loves another as himself. And this should be taken literally: we need to see in just another self and another what you would do to themselves. True love is what it does suffer with those who suffer, who has enjoyed with, bear the weight of others, he knows, as Paul says, be with your loved one. It 's a love, then, not just sentiment, or fine words, but deeds.
who has another religion tries to do so well for so-called "rule gold "which are found in all religions. It requires us to do to others what you would want done to us. Gandhi explains in a simple and effective:" I can not hurt you no hurt myself "(8) .
This month, therefore, must be an opportunity to refocus on the love of neighbor, which has so many faces: the neighbor, the classmate, to by his closest relatives. But he also anguished faces of the humanity that brings TV into our homes places of war and natural disasters. Once they were unknown and a thousand miles away. I am now also become our next.
Love will suggest from time to time what do, and rejoice gradually on the measure of our hearts to Jesus
Chiara Lubich
