“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10: 27).
Next in Luke chapter 10, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to explain how we should treat our neighbor: with mercy.
Mercy is at the core of God’s relationship with all of us, His creatures. And He calls us to do likewise (Luke 10: 37). This implies being brothers and sisters that love, but also being guides that lead and torches that light the world.
We shall be “the light of the world”because God’s faith, mercy and love shall be “set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all” (Matthew 5: 15).
We cannot think of ourselves as independent individuals, who exist on our own, as we depend on God for our own existence.
True God has made us free. But in using our free will we should partake of His Mercy, His profound Love and endless forgiveness, by choosing to be merciful, forgiving, loving…by choosing all that is good.
And this does not include the “tolerance” that is demanded of us by the “culture” of our days. Being “light” means guiding our neighbor and trying to bring them closer to God. And being merciful does not mean tolerating whatever they do and just observing how they drift away from Him.
“Loving your neighbor as yourself“ does include wanting his/her salvation, inasmuch as we desire our own salvation…or else, are we really loving them as we love ourselves?
But Jesus goes beyond this love of self: “Love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15: 12). And how can we love with His Love? “Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us” (1 John 4: 10). This means we cannot love by ourselves. Therefore, we love God with the Love He loves us, and in loving God with the Love He loves us, that which flows to our neighbor is God’s Love.
Only then can we be “light” and be merciful, forgiving, loving. Only then can we love our neighbor as God loves us.
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