Relationality at the centre

Two commandments

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law, tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34–40)

If the ten commandments were the basis of Old Testament life, Jesus summarised it into two commandments. They were not commandments created by Jesus, but already present in the books of the Old Testament. Jesus brought them together, and more importantly he puts it at the centre.

Relationality is at the very essence of God, and the commandments remind us that it is at the essence of us, human-beings. As we realize these dimensions, the world will become a better place (or Kingdom of God will be realized a little more in our own lives). Another quotation from a French Jesuit theologian sums it so beautifully;

It is the fact that, in the course of my life, love has gradually become incarnate in me; my personality has been woven by the love I have received and the love I have given; the way in which I have expressed this love through my body, which is my capacity to be present to others and to the universe, this love has forever constituted my personality. We sometimes ask ourselves the problem of the relationship with others: let us know that this relationship is not adventitious, additional, but that it is constitutive of our being. I am woven together by the love that I have received and that I have given. And if it is true that love alone passes through death, we can say that, to the extent that my being is open to the totality of God and others, I will forever be this being that I have woven throughout the days. (Léon-DUFOUR, Xavier, Face à la mort, Jésus et Paul, p. 305). (Translated by deepl)