The Greatest Commandment

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, May 9, 2021

What do you think is the greatest commandment in the entire Bible? There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament: 248 of them are positive commandments, and 365 are negative commandments. While positive commandments instruct Jews what they should do, negative commandments prescribe to them what they should not do. The most prominent of these commandments are the Ten Commandments. When a scholar of the law asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matt. 22:36), the Pharisee was simply asking Jesus to specify from the many 613 commandments, which one of them is the greatest. Although Jesus chose two: Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself, those are not the greatest commandments in the Bible. They are just the greatest commandments in the Law, the Old Testament. The greatest commandment was revealed at the Last Supper: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn. 13:34); “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you” (Jn. 15:12). 

Jesus’ new and great commandment “love one another as I love you” contains the Old Testament Law, but the Old Testament Law does not contain Christ’s kind of love. The Old Testament commands us not to kill, but Christ’s commandment of love forbids us from getting into sinful anger (Matt. 5:21-22). In all of these, Jesus is raising the bar of what is required and expected of us. He is addressing the root cause of our external actions which is found in the human heart. Jesus is not messing with the Ten Commandments. He is not trashing it. In Matthew’s Gospel he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill” (5:17). 

Sisters and brothers, Jesus’ soteriology is quite clear. In Matthew’s Gospel 25:35-40, Jesus tells us how the Son of Man will judge all the nations of the world when he sits upon his glorious throne. The sine qua non of salvation for Jesus are these: “…I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” The truth of the matter is this: the way you treat others is the way you treat Jesus himself because the Lord does not dwell in some remote and distant place, but rather in you and in those around you. Jesus is a lot closer to us than we think. St. Matthew tells us that the moment Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom (Matt. 27:50-51), thereby exposing to all the innermost and most sacred area of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem which was accessible only to the Israelite high priest. The opening of the Holy of Holies communicates that God was no longer confined and restricted in a building, in Jerusalem’s Temple. God is rather now to be found in a new temple, the temple that is the Body of Christ— you and me. Each of us is the living stone that forms God’s temple. Each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the way we treat each other is of supreme importance. Jesus wants us to begin to love others not as we love ourselves but more than we love ourselves. In this way, our love becomes more than merely human. It becomes divine. It becomes a means for God to touch the heart of another person. That’s what the Lord Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel when he gives us the greatest commandment in the Bible: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” How does Jesus love us? On Good Friday, he shows us precisely how he loves us: “He bore our sins in his own body on the cross, so that free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). And on Easter Sunday, we see the result of his sacrificial love— victory over sin and death, the ushering in of a new era of mercy, grace, favor and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which finally brought healing and reconciliation to the human race.

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day. We celebrate the special and wonderful women who participated in God’s miracle of creation in a unique and significant way. When it comes to divine and sacrificial love, mothers have a lot to teach us about it than everyone on the planet. Bringing forth new life generates in mothers a strong capacity to die to self. Nine months of physical discomfort, the excruciating pain and danger of labor and childbirth, the sleepless nights, several months of breast-feeding their baby, changing the diapers, cleaning the baby’s mess, giving their entire life to protect, loving her child more than she loves herself etc bear testimony that sacrificial love is possible. A mother continues to love even when she gets no love in return. That kind of love is sacrificial and redemptive. So, in our mothers, we see the greatest commandment in the Bible in full display. We see it in action. Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Mothers teach us that each of us has the capacity to love totally, sacrificially, unreservedly.