“Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest?” Jesus answered, “You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This
is the first and the most important of the commandments. The second is like it: You shall
love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets are founded on these two
commandments.”

Reflect

“Two greatest commandments” Conforming ourselves to the kingdom values is tantamount
to making the love of God and love of neighbor as our moral compass. In today’s world, it
is so easy to get lost – either we say that we love God but despise our neighbors or we
do service for others while removing God in the equation. The love of God and the love
of neighbor are inseparable. On the one hand, our love for God is the very foundation
of our love for others. On the other hand, our love for God is concretized in our love for
our neighbors. The Gospel for today tells of these two greatest commandments: the
love of God (cf. Dt. 6:5) and the love of neighbor (cf. Lev. 19:18). The passage appears
to emphasize the inseparability of these two, with the use of the Greek adjective homoia,
which means “like.” The second greatest commandment is “like” the first according to
Matthew’s account, which we cannot find in the account of the parallel passage in the
Gospel of Mark (cf. Mk. 12:28- 34). In our faith journey, there are times when we tend to
keep the two separated. If these two are kept apart, our moral compass will surely
malfunction.

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