Fulfill the Commandment to Love
What did Jesus mean about love
I would like you to think of something what if Jesus never said the words we see in the Gospel today. I am giving you a new commandment—love one another. How would you live your faith. I think you would realize that you would live your faith differently.
Some people already do unwittingly. Anyone who is focused on trying not to sin without any understanding of the actual commandment is to love one another is essentially living like this. That is why some people can be intensely mean but claim to be good Catholics.
If we believe that Jesus did say those words and we realize how much our faith life is based on those words, then we must realize how important it is to understand those words.
Three words to love in Greek; One in English
I am sure you know that the Greeks had three words that we translate to mean to love. We also understand how often we use the word to love because we have only one word.
Let me give you an example from the opposite end of faith. The hispanics do not have a word for evil like we do. They have a word that means bad and you can fix it to mean really bad but unlike English speakers they do not have the word for evil which is more precise description of an awful person or being.
That is like our relationship to the word love, we use it in ways that other religions do not. We love God, our neighbor and chocolate—they are all the same word.
We use it to for everything from interpersonal relationships to describing how much we enjoy chocolate. That means we must understand the exact definition of this word in order to understand how to live Jesus’ commandment.
As you know, I don’t speak Greek. However, I can as the saying goes BS my way through Latin. St. Clement wrote the first Vulgate Bible which is the Bible translated from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. So using his words as a guide, I can trace down what the original Greek New Testament said and that is the word agape which is that friendly love. St. Clement translated it to be the Latin word for to hold in esteem. So to love one another means to hold each other in high esteem—it is to treat others in a way in which they are highly respected. This means that to love is to recognize in every other person that they have a special dignity above all other creatures which is precisely Catholic teaching.
Treating others with respect
This means, we are to treat other persons as if they are different and unique. This is at the bottom of all Catholic social teaching. Our role as Catholics, therefore, is not just to treat someone well, or treat them better but to treat them as someone who is so unique that we recognize they are of a unique nature that we honor this.
If we take all that away, then we treat others strictly as the rules require and that takes away their special dignity. What Jesus is teaching us is to go beyond the rules when dealing with another person.
This becomes the whole core of Catholic teaching. Treat others as they have a unique status because they do. The law may tell us to teach people a certain way but Jesus teaches us to not go below that standard but to go above the standard.
This is the message. So Jesus is taking away the law as the standard and replacing it with the Greek word that means for people to hold others in high esteem and to see others beyond just their role or their business status or anything else.
Stopping gangs
So let me give you an example.
There is a lot of talk in the news about gangs and that we have to do what we can to stop gangs because they are dangerous. That is true. However, what is the worst part of gangs. Not only that gang members MAY hurt us. Gangs do destroy their own. They are tyrannical operations that literally feed off their members.
There has been talk about one notorious gang in which the regional leader, I think for the whole East Coast, is twenty-four years old. How come he is so young and is the leader of a major criminal organization? Simple, gang members do not live that long and those who do, end up decades behind non-gang members in living their lives. Gangs destroy people’s live. Everyone is talking about locking up gang members but should not we be more focused on keeping people out of gangs?
How do you stop gangs? By locking up their members? No by preventing people from joining them in the first place and the best defense in that case is to treat people with the love that Jesus commands.
Why? because gangs recruit people by making them feel special when no one else is there to tell them they are special. You want to stop gang activity—listen to what Jesus has to say.
Putting the message into action
Let me give you another example. I often ask any student who has trouble with math if they tend to be creative. Often times they respond yes. I point out that many creative people are bad at math. Right brain/left brain thing. So the student who feels they are stupid because they are failing math, needs to understand that they are not stupid they need to see their gifts and use them and then go back to math. They are not stupid and anyone who calls them that is committing sin. They have to learn how to do math based on their way of learning.
However, if they get the message they cannot do math because they are stupid, then those who tell them that are in sin because they do not respect them.
I don’t know if this was original intention but the idea of condemning someone because they are not good at something like math is the illustrated well in the Metallica song The Unforgiven. Listen carefully, it is about a talented person whose talents do not fit into what is expected of him—a common struggle with artists. It turns him bitter and angry.
Jesus is calling us to treat everyone with dignity and respect. That is his commandment and everything is secondary to this.
Fr. Robert J Carr is pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA
The parish podcast is at CatholicAudioMedia.com
The newest edition of Fr Robert J Carr's latest book is now available. Christ in Our Humanity. You can find it here.