Peace Rules
Love is enough
In Mark 12:28-34, one of the scribes puts Jesus to the test by asking Him which of the commandments is the most important, to which Jesus responds: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”
In other words, Jesus knew that loving God and loving one another was enough. If we honestly and truly love God and one another, nothing else would matter and everything would find its proper place.
But notice that Jesus said “love” your neighbor, not “like” your neighbor. And thank goodness He did not command us to “like” them! After all, some days we may not even “like” our family and friends very much.
But even if we do not like someone, we can still love and care for them as a fellow human being. In fact, often the person who needs our love and care the most is the one person who is not very likable at the moment.
In his well-known book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: The Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on—including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”
In other words, each time we are kind to another person, whether we like them or not, we come to love them a little more.
As we know, the biggest way that God shows His love for us is through His Son Jesus Christ. After all, Christ willingly died for us even though we were pretty unlikable. St. Paul put it like this in his letter to the Romans: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Today, let us remember all that God has done for us, and, in return, by God’s grace, strive to love one another as God has loved us.
