31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Mark 12:28-34)
Jesus was a sound psychologist! He set the standard of loving neighbour to be similar to loving oneself. We all know that if we don’t love ourselves then we won’t easily be able to apply the ‘law’ of love to our neighbour. It all begins with being able to appreciate our creation by God and God’s choice of each one of us as precious in God’s eyes. In the psalms, we pray ‘I thank you, Lord, for the wonder of my being’ but we do not contemplate that wonder often enough.
When people talk about their spiritual lives and their relationship with God they very often concentrate on the failures, the shortcomings, the inadequacies and the sins. We seem to be able to move more easily into guilt trip mode than to notice the goodness in ourselves.
Saint Bernard describes the spiritual journey as being made up of four stages: The journey begins by loving one’s soul, one’s own self. That implies that you want the best for your soul, you aspire to heaven and consequently, fear hell. The journey continues as one begins to love justice. This means that you will want to do right, to fulfil your duties and cope with the trials that come your way. With the third stage of the journey one becomes a friend of wisdom. You do all you can to please God, so that God will be content with us and our lives. The final stage of the spiritual journey goes beyond oneself. Now you no longer act so that God should be pleased with you, but because YOU are pleased with God.
This may, at first, seem pretentious. But being pleased with God suggests that we can, at last, appreciate how God is present in our world, what God does in our lives and how easily we can relate to our God. If we are beings who live our lives in that context then surely we are blessed, happy and loveable - loved by God, by others, and by self. I am such a being as is everyone created and loved by the same God.
O God, my Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, help me to truly love myself with something of the love you have for me. And then, filled with your love, my life will be charged with a divine love for others.