Today Jesus is put to the test and asked what is the greatest of all of the commandments.  Jesus doesn’t have to think too long to be able to reply that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Love is the greatest commandment.  Love is the one thing that we all must do.  All of the scriptures, all of revelation, all of the things that we do in life depend upon our fulfillment of this simple command to love.  If we do not love then nothing else matters.

     Too often when we think about love we turn within ourselves and we examine our feelings.  We think of love as a warm and positive regard for another person.  We think about love as something very personal and something that each of us chooses to do in our own way.  We think that love is something that we feel and is a response to an experience that we have of another person who has loved us.  Love is something warm and fuzzy.

     Our readings today help us to understand that gospel love is something more than just a subjective feeling or an emotion.  Love is a commandment.  Love has a claim upon us as human persons.  Love is not just a movement of the will or a matter of the heart.  Love is justice put into action.  Love speaks to our intellect and asks us to acknowledge according to reason the needs of our neighbors and that we are called to respond to those needs.  We do not just love when we feel like loving.  We do not love only those whom we like and we feel good about.  We do not measure our love by how we feel about something.  Certainly we love our friends and family but we are also called by gospel love to love the stranger and the alien, to even love our enemies.  St. John tells us:  “If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  This is the commandment we have from him; whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1Jn 4,20f)

     Love is not limited to the subjective realm.  Love has an objective component.  When we see the needs of others we are called to respond in love and to help others in need.  Our first reading from the book of Exodus reminds us of the practical demands that love places upon us.  Love requires just action towards others.  Love requires that we do what is right.  “If you take your neighbor’s  cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset; for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body.” (Ex 22,26)  According to gospel love we love “in truth”.  Love is the fulfillment of the law.  Some would call this “tough love” for it doesn’t always involve doing what feels good but rather involves doing what is good, not just for me but for the other person and for all people in society.

     All kinds of behavior are excused in the name of love.  We must love in truth.  Love is not just doing what I feel like doing.  Love is the fulfillment of the law; love is acting according to reason; love is responding to the needs of others and the greatest good for all people.  Love is something objective that can be seen and measured.  As Paul is commending the Thessalonians today in the second reading for imitating what they have observed in Paul and his fellow workers in the gospel.  Love is something that we can model for others.  Love is something that we can and must learn and that we must teach one another.  Love is not just taught, but it is also caught, through the witness of another person who models love for us.

     For many years Mother Teresa did not feel the love of God but she continued to love and to live in love by loving the people in need around her.  Married people do not always feel love for one another but they continue to faithfully live in love with each other.  We love God with all our heart, soul and strength because it is the right and just thing to do and fulfills the law, we love our neighbors as ourselves because it is the right and just thing to do.  We love, not because it feels right and good, but because the law of reason and justice demands it and because we are created for it.  As St. John of the Cross reminds us, “In the evening of our life we will be judged in love.”