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The Light of the World
Saturday
Today’s liturgy combines the love of God and of our neighbor. The prayers of the Church
earnestly ask for a love of God by which we can love Him above all things and in all things.
The Epistle and Gospel urge us to love our neighbor, for the love of God and of our neighbor
cannot be separated.
“If any man say: I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar. For he that loveth not his
brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?” (1 Jn 4:20.) Why must
this be so? Because the love of God and of neighbor are one and the same love. We love our
brother for the sake of God, that is, with the same love with which we love God and Christ.
Taking more than a merely human viewpoint, we look at man with the eyes of God and see
in him a child of God, in whom the Father is well pleased. We see in him the soul redeemed
by the blood of the Savior, the soul for which the Son of God became man and was lifted up
on the cross, the soul for which He instituted the Church and the sacraments. Seeing in our
fellow man a member of the body of Christ, we know that whatever we do to the member we
do to the head, which is Christ the Lord. “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of
these My least brethren, you did it to Me.” And likewise: “Amen I say to you, as long as you
did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to Me” (Mt 25:40, 45). This is the chief
characteristic of Christian charity: it is inseparably united with our love for God and Christ.
Reminding us of this unity, the Mass for the fifth Sunday after Pentecost tells us that we can
love God and the Savior only in so far as we love our brother. For he who does not love his
brother, cannot love God.
“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” ( Jn 15:12).
How faithfully and devotedly Jesus has loved us! So we, too, must love our brother and our
sister, both as regards their temporal welfare and as regards the care of their soul and their
eternal salvation. Who will fulfill this commandment of the Lord? Since self-love is evidently
the greatest foe of charity, only he can fulfill this command who has conquered self-love, which
makes us so self-centered that it causes us to look upon our neighbor as a stranger for whom we
need have no concern. It stirs within us the spirit of egoism, jealousy, pride, envy, and hatred,
rendering impossible any perfect love towards our fellow man. It leads us to commit a thousand
offenses against charity, for it makes us insensible, cold, ill-disposed, unjust, partial, bitter. If we,
therefore, wish to fulfill the commandment of Christian charity, we must die to the love of self;
this we will do only in so far as we are filled with love for God and Christ. The love of God and
the love of self are like the two arms of a scale; the one can go up only if the other goes down.
The love of self disappears in the same degree as the love for God fills our soul. For this reason
the love of our neighbor can be practiced only if we have true love for God. The more perfectly
we possess this love of God, the more perfectly we will also practice the love of our neighbor;
these two belong so inseparably together that the love of our neighbor will be possible only if
we have the love of God within us.
“Pour forth Thy love into our hearts” that we may love Thee “in all things and above all things”
(Collect). If the love of God is within us, we will also love our neighbor. Then we will be “all
of one mind, having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful,
modest, humble; not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing”
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