But Ruth said, “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16)
…A scholar of the law tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:35-40)
Piety
Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous;
teach me to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to seek reward,
except that of knowing that I do your will.
teach me to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to seek reward,
except that of knowing that I do your will.
Prayer for Generosity attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola
Study
Jesus had bested the Pharisees on the question about paying taxes to Caesar. Then he had come out on top against the Sadducees on the question of the resurrection, a subject on which they were at odds with the Pharisees. Now, the Pharisees think, rubbing their hands with glee, we’re going to trap him on the issue of the Law. By Jesus’ day, there were over 600 laws, all of equal weight in the Pharisees’ estimation. Jesus will be wrong if he picks anyone of them over the rest.
Jesus doesn’t hesitate a second when the legal scholar asks him which of the commandments in the law is most important. Using his knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus refers back to Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 in his response. If you love God with everything you have and if you love your neighbor the way you love yourself, you’ve got everything covered.
Two things stand out as I ponder Jesus’ response. First, there’s the assumption that we know how to love ourselves. When I look around, I’m sure we know how to indulge ourselves on the one hand and beat up on ourselves on the other, but I’m not convinced that we know much about truly loving ourselves. To love ourselves and treat ourselves with respect takes trusting in God’s love for us. Knowing ourselves as we do with all our imperfections and sinfulness, trusting that God loves us as we are requires a great leap of faith on some days. It’s good to keep in mind that God has expressed great love for us by creating us in God’s own image.
The second thing I noticed is something that Jesus doesn’t say, and sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Jesus talks about a love that moves outward from us: love for God and love for our brothers and sisters. What he doesn’t explicitly say is that if we’re outwardly focused, we can’t, at the same time, be the star of the show. And that is where most of our problems with these two commandments come in. We can’t be the center of attention if our energies are focused in other directions. And quite a few of us like being at the center of our own little universes.
Action
Ruth could have chosen to star in the saga of her widowhood. She could have remained in the land of her people and probably married again. But she saw the greater need of her mother-in-law, Naomi. Naomi had no one to take care of her and she was an outsider in Moab. In a time of famine, Naomi heard that the harvests back home had been more abundant, so she decided to make her way back to Bethlehem. Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law flowed outward from her heart. She told Naomi she would accompany her and she would become a part of Naomi’s people. She would even accept Naomi’s God as her God. That is truly giving of oneself.
What can you do this week to remove yourself from the limelight of your little universe in favor of letting your love flow toward God and all whom God loves?
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