“We cannot truly love God unless this love overflows into love for our brothers and sisters”, Pope Leo XIV said during his Sunday Angelus on the 25th of October.
Addressing the faithful gathered in Saint Peter’s Square, the Pope reflected on the day’s Gospel from Saint Matthew, in which a teacher of the Law tests Jesus by asking which commandment is the greatest.
Jesus responds with the words of Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
In doing so, Pope Leo explained, Christ places love at the very centre of our relationship with God.
A personal relationship with God
It is not enough, the Pope said, simply to acknowledge that God exists, that He is the only God, or that He is almighty. “The Lord seeks a personal relationship with us: the one true God wants to become our God”, said the Pope.
Within this encounter, the commandment to love is neither an obligation nor an imposition, since “one cannot love ‘on command’.”
Rather, Pope Leo continued, love for God is the deepest expression of human desire, which finds fulfilment in communion with Him. Our love becomes authentic when it responds to God’s love, “which always precedes us”.
That response calls for a commitment involving the whole person: heart, soul and mind.
Seeing others through the eyes of Christ
Alongside the first commandment, Jesus places a second: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.
The two commandments, the Pope explained, spring from the same source. Through a close relationship with God, we learn to see both ourselves and others through the eyes of Christ.
“In this way, selfishness is overcome and even love for oneself becomes charity: our existence turns toward the other and becomes a gift for those around us”, he said.
Love gives faith its essence
Pope Leo then went on to recall the words of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who understood that love inspires the Church’s life and mission.
“Love alone”, she wrote, makes “the Church’s members act”, adding that, if love were extinguished, the apostles would no longer preach the Gospel.
Without love, the Pope warned, “our faith would be deprived of its essence, our good works would be reduced to mere moralism, and our hope would be in vain”. Love for God and love for others are therefore inseparable.
“We cannot truly love our neighbour except as children of the same Father who loved us first in his Son, Jesus”, he said.
Bringing his reflection to a close, Pope Leo invited the faithful to ask the Lord for “the grace of a new heart, capable of embracing and living out the greatest of all commandments”.
He entrusted this prayer to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “in whose Immaculate Heart there is nothing but love”.
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