30th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Love your neighbour as yourself. This is the second great commandment of the law. This is 'One of the Great Commandments on which the whole Law and the Prophets stand'. We belong to one another; we have a common origin and we share a common destiny. "Love your neighbour as yourself." The first part of that 'second injunction,' love your neighbour, is clear enough. I would imagine that the vast majority of Christians would use it as a criterion for measuring the quality of their Christian lives, for examining their consciences.
However, it is the second part of that injunction that has caused difficulties in the Christian tradition. Love your neighbour as your love yourself. Christian spirituality has often confused love of self with selfishness, and thus saw it is sinful and an obstacle to loving the neighbour. The selfish one is so wrapped up in himself that he hardly knows that his neighbour exists at all, let alone loving him or caring about him. But the love of self that today's gospel has in mind is a very different reality. Love of self here denotes a basic contentment with what I am and have; a fundamental contentment with my own humanity; I'm happy in my own skin. I am not going around all day every day apologizing for my presence on this planet. I have an optimistic confidence that, in life, the positive elements outweigh the negative. Now this should not be regarded as a charter for complacency. The Christian is not expected to walk through life with an idiotic smile on his face, oblivious to the injustices abroad on the world. This would be a strange shape for the love of neighbour to take. There is of course a place for righteous anger, there is much in the world to put at right. But, please give us a break. There was only one Messiah and we are still striving to come to terms with the trouble he caused. Overall, the Christian vision is tinged by hope. Or, to put it in religious terms, a firm belief in the goodness of God and a confidence that his creation reflects that goodness. What the gospel of today is saying is that I can only love my neighbour or my God, if I am blessed with or striving for this disposition. As the scriptures tell us in another place, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice. So if you are worried about your children and their peers not attending Mass and the sacraments, you can take consolation from today's gospel. If they treat their neighbours well, if they had a positive, balanced outlook on life, 'they are not far from the Kingdom of God'.
Those who have studied the human condition at close quarters will bear out what is written in the gospels. If I have no love of self, if I am forever convinced that life has short-changed me, I will be seething with anger and resentment. I will hate myself and that hatred will turn outwards in a destructive manner towards my neighbour. If a fellow feels like a dying wasp, the chances are he is going to behave like a dying wasp, and that can't be good for God or neighbour. We are all familiar, I presume, with such characters. From the time he crawls out of bed in the morning, to the time he collapses into it at night, he has had only one set of decisions to make: "What shall I be angry about today?" He storms through life as resentment on wheels, leaving only bemusement and unhappiness in his wake. As far as this man is concerned, for every solution there are ten problems, for every silver cloud, he will willingly and speedily furnish ten dark linings. Now, admittedly, life is tough for these characters, but, by God can they be generous with their misery! They will insist on sharing it even with those who already have more than sufficient for that day. American writer and wag Gore Vidal paints a picture of a character such as this in one of his political novels. He has him musing miserably at the end of the book, repeating to himself over and over again: "Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a little in me dies."
The frightening this about all of this, is that apparently the groundwork is already completed before we are four years of age. The particular disposition with which we will approach life, whether positive or negative, has already been set in place. This, obviously, places an enormous responsibility on parents. But I think there is a greater appreciation today of the demands of parenthood than ever before. Their task is daunting indeed. Social scientists, for example, tell us that most vandalism and anti-social behaviour has its source in self hatred. The love of self then, far from being an obstacle to loving the neighbour, is an essential prerequisite for this activity. Unless we love ourselves, we will be incapable of loving either God or neighbour.