In today’s Gospel, Jesus Christ invokes the greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He concludes: “There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Our Lord, thus, identifies an inextricable link between the love of God and the love of neighbor. We love our neighbors best when we love God the most. This profound truth invites us to reconsider how we think of Christian charity—the theological virtue of supernatural love—to our neighbors.
We often interpret the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves in the following manner: It is evident that all people love themselves to a healthy—if not to an excessive—degree. The world would be a much better place if we loved others even a fraction as much as we loved ourselves. In other words, we tend to think that everyone loves themselves excessively and others insufficiently.
This interpretation, however, misses the heart of this Christian commandment. The problem is not that people love themselves too much and others too little. Indeed, the real problem is this: very few people love themselves (or others) enough! Far too many love themselves for the wrong reasons.
Jesus transforms human love. Baptized Christians do not live—nor do they love—in a purely natural manner. They love in and through and because of God. The dynamics of mere human loving are built upon the good that we recognize in the person or thing that we love. Christian love, by contrast, operates in a completely different way. Christian love—the theological virtue of “charity”—loves for a different motivation and for a different reason. We love in charity because of God’s goodness—not because of our own (or another’s) goodness. God and God’s goodness informs how a Christian loves oneself and one’s neighbor.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines charity thus: “Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (no. 1822). God is at the center of charity. Charity is the virtue by which we love God and all things because of God.
Through the theological virtue of charity, Christians love in and through Jesus. This means that they love because Jesus loves and how Jesus loves. How does Jesus love? He loves all things—infinitely!—because of God’s infinite goodness. Our Lord does not love someone because of their own native and natural goodness. Our native goodness is fragile. Sometimes we are better. Sometimes we are worse. Charity, however, is not proportioned to human capriciousness. Rather, charity loves because of something infinite, certain, supernatural, and glorious—God himself.
Through baptism, we are conformed and configured to Jesus. We are enabled to love as Jesus himself loves. The properly Christian way of loving is to love ourselves and our neighbor because God loves us and our neighbor. And God is always good. He always loves. Thus, the Christian always loves himself or herself—and all others—in God.
Love your neighbor as yourself. In conclusion, no one loves themselves enough or in the right way apart from Jesus. Only those living in union with Jesus love themselves sufficiently. If we try to love ourselves because of ourselves, we do not love ourselves enough. Only those who love themselves because of God and because of his goodness love themselves in the correct way. Only God’s infinite goodness can inform the supernatural love of charity. Any other motivation for love is far too brittle.
Let us, then, contemplate the love of God. May we meditate on God’s goodness—the reason why he loves us and all others. God is always good (and infinitely so). Therefore, he always loves (and infinitely so). And through baptism, Jesus truly enables us to love ourselves and all others as he loves: because of God himself. In the love that Jesus makes possible—theological charity.
