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Reflection By Fr Peter Slater,
This teaching of the “great commandment” is found also in Matthew and Luke. Luke has the lawyer answer the question and then putting a further question about who constitutes a neighbour. This leads to Jesus telling the story of the Good Samaritan.
Looking at Mark’s account, which is read at Mass today, we find Jesus referring to Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and heard in our first reading; “Listen Israel the Lord our God is the one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
This is a text (referred to as the Shema) that Jews prayed several times a day. It would certainly have been familiar to Jesus’ listeners.
Added to this is a command found at Leviticus 19:18 – “love your neighbour as yourself.”
So, you could say there is nothing new in this teaching of Jesus, it is found in the scriptures, but it is worth noting that the two commands of love God and love neighbour sum up the well-known Ten Commandments. They also give a very succinct formula for living the life of faith.
(As a digression, this teaching can be seen as summing up a kind of Part 2 of Jesus’ teaching. Part 1 would be the initial message of the nearness of the Kingdom of God, which is a way of saying God is near to you and God loves you. The listener then responds by asking: if God is near to us and loves us, what then should we do? The answer to that is: you should love God and your neighbour.)
I have sometimes heard or read that, in this passage, Jesus commands us to love ourselves, as if we have three commands: love God, love yourself and love your neighbour. It sems to me that Jesus assumes, as Leviticus did, that we love ourselves already and should take that as the standard for loving neighbour.
A very interesting question is who constitutes the neighbour. As noted already Luke’s version of this episode sees neighbour as including people from beyond the bounds of Israel. It looks like the neighbour is anyone at all we come across who needs our help. We should note other places where Jesus teaches us to love even our enemies and those who do us harm (Matthew 5:43 – 48 for instance). There is no one excluded from the category of neighbour if we get the chance to love them. This is a significant step forward in Jesus’ teaching.
The Shining a Light project is calling all in our diocese to be aware that the scourge of family and domestic violence is more widespread than we know. It calls us to be aware that our neighbour may be the person experiencing such violence, and love of neighbour might be practised by offering a listening ear or passing on the contact details of support services, or helping in some other way.
At the very least we have in this twin command of loving God and neighbour a simple yet profound summary of the life of Christian discipleship.
