Love and compassion makes all the difference

 ‘The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another, when we are there in the most attentive and caring way.’ J Kornfield: ‘A Path with Heart’1993, pg. 14.

 If you were to look back over your life, what would be a couple of times that you remember being loving towards another? Often none of the loving actions we remember are extraordinary. Maybe, you like me, thought of simple, touching moments like telling Dad ‘I love you’ before he dies, or leaving a busy life to drive across country and care for a sister’s child while she heals from a car accident. It is important in life to never discount a simple gesture of compassion as this can impact a lifetime. Each touch of love or kindness can make a difference!  

A new beginning in someone’s life often takes place because one person reached out to another at just the right moment. The phase ‘one person at a time’ indicates the necessity and efficacy of individual, compassionate actions. One small gesture of love or compassion can make a difference. 

 Love of God and Neighbour

In the Gospel today, Matthew 22: 34-40, Jesus gives us the greatest commandment: to ‘love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and love our neighbour as you love yourself’. He links up all the Scripture, as a moral value and guide for life with the meeting place between the love of God and the love of one’s neighbour. In saying that the second is like the first he is implying to love God means that you also love God’s people.

Here Jesus is not talking of intense emotional love. In the old testament there are many references to many kinds of love, but the love referred to here  by Jesus is the love of Deuteronomy 6:5, the love of Yahweh ...it is an active response of the faithful people to the active love of God.

To love God with all one’s heart, and soul, and mind, is to choose to respond to God even as God chooses to love us. In the New Testament the principle word used for love is ‘agape’ – a loving kindness, active compassion or mercy that is both generous and continuous. To love one’s neighbour as yourself is to make a conscious choice and act upon it. Only the action of love is commanded. In Christ, this we can do, even when we don’t feel like it.                                                                                                                   

 Marie Weatherall