Greatest Commandment

Carmelite homily for Lectionary 461 – Monday, October 7, 2019

In today’s Gospel passage we have the well-known Greatest Commandment — love the Lord your God with all your strength, soul, mind and body, and love your neighbor as yourself. Saint John of the Cross puts these two halves together brilliantly. He says, “As love of neighbor grows so does love of God; and as love of God grows so does love of neighbor.” It’s a spiral; that the two halves of this Greatest Commandment work together to bring us to ever greater and greater heights of love.