Reflection:Mt.

22: 34-40

The Gospel today reminds us about the two greatest commandment; First, You shall love the Lord your
God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Second, You shall love your neighbor
as yourself. However, the question is why do we need to love our neighbors as we love ourselves?

I cannot love God with all of myself without loving my neighbors. It should be my neighbors are my
sistersandbrothers. If I neglect or hate them will not make me at peace.

First, loving God with all of our being is the greatest commandment. This has been handed down
through generation to generation. Yes, loving God is the greatest commandment of all. However, we are
given a second greatest commandment and that is “You shall loveyour neighbor as yourself.” This gives
us the idea that loving our neighbor brings us to fully God follower.

The two greatest commandments that was mentioned in the Gospel today are inseparable to each
other. Why? because love is not just feeling alone but also doing. This doing involves our action to do
something out of loving. We should not be contented with words, instead we should go beyond—that is
doing. Our true love of God reflects merely on our actions towards our neighbor and ourselves. It is so
ironic if we only say I love you Lord, I love you Lord but we cannot love our neighbor.

If we really love God we also need to truly love our neighbors. Even if how imperfect they are, even if
they came from different sect or religion: Muslim or IglesianiKristo for example, even if they become a
treat to us, or even if how many times they sin or persecute us, even if how bad their smell are and most
importantly even if we hate them. Lahatnang unlovable things ibigay, ipagsama-samana, they still
worthy of our love. Likewise, we should not stop loving even if we experiences being unloved by other
people. When we stop loving, we will be like a protester, who go against to the cycle of life.

Nonetheless, identifying ourselves as the ultimate neighbor will be our vehicle going to an effective
lover. It is in loving of ourselves that we can relay our love to our neighbor fully. For example, how can a
person love another person if he/she cannot love his/her self. What I mean to say is that how can we
give love if we don’t have love. If we are cruel to our self how can we give love to others? Let us
remember that our greatest enemy is ourselves. If we are messy in ourselves then we become a mess of
the society.

My brothers, the Jesus reminds us always that God loves us first, then we love God. The love of God and
our love to God brings us to love our neighbor. So that our neighbor may also experience the love of
God that was given to us. In this reason, our neighbor will do likewise and to his other neighbor. Then
being I as a neighbor of others will also experience this love. As a result, we can proudly say that, I love
the Lord, our God, with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. Plus, I love my neighbor as I
love myself. Amen.