Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon on the Greatest Commandment
Bishop Barron preaches on the greatest commandment from Matthew 22, exploring what it truly means to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
Summary
Bishop Barron reflects on the passage from Matthew 22 in which Jesus is asked by a teacher of the law to name the greatest commandment. Barron argues that Jesus's answer — to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself — represents the most authoritative possible answer to this ancient rabbinic challenge, since it comes from the Word made flesh. The sermon's central argument is that most people love God at a low level: either out of fear of punishment or in order to obtain benefits. Drawing on St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Catherine of Siena, Barron contends that the highest form of love is to love God propter ipsum solum — for God's own sake alone — and that Jesus's declaration "I no longer call you servants, but friends" represents one of the most extraordinary statements in all religious literature.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Question Put to Jesus
Bishop Barron: Peace be with you. Friends, our gospel is from the 22nd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. It's kind of a conclusion to a pretty rancorous section, where Jesus has been doing battle with the scribes and Pharisees. This passage brings that great argument to a conclusion, and it does so in an interesting way, because one of the teachers of the law says to him, "Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest?"
Now, this was an old move within rabbinic circles — to challenge someone: can you sum up the richness and complexity of the law in one statement? How would you sum this whole thing up? So they're testing him to see how this new rabbi, Jesus, is able to do this.
When he gives his answer here, we're on pretty holy ground, because it's not just one rabbi among many answering this central question — it's the Lord. It's the Word made flesh telling us what's at the very heart of the matter. Any Christian, any spiritually alert person, should be really attentive to what's being said here.
The Two Great Commandments
So here's what he says: "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 first of the commandments."
Now, in a way, there's nothing new here. He's repeating the Shema prayer — "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God." This great prayer of ancient Israel, repeated to this day by pious Jews many times a day — the Shema, the central defining prayer. But then the Lord adds, "This is the greatest. The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself." The whole law and the prophets — that means for him the entirety of scripture — depend upon these two commandments.
We're on holy ground. The Word made flesh is telling us what is absolutely basic. So let's get after this a little bit.
The Summum Bonum
"You shall love the Lord your God with every power in you — heart, mind, soul." This is the ordering of the whole of your life toward the summum bonum, if I can put that in more philosophical language. What's the highest good?
There are all kinds of goods. I'm surrounded right now by all kinds of good things — things that are attractive to the will, things that are full of ontological integrity. Watching a baseball game is good. A sunset is good. A car that's operating properly is good. But the goods of the world are arranged in a kind of hierarchy. We can notice good, better, best — in regard to anything. That's a better golf swing than that one. That's a better-played baseball game. That's a more beautiful statue. So we see the goods of the world arranged in a hierarchical way.
But then there's the summum bonum — the highest good. God. "That than which nothing greater can be thought," as St. Anselm says of God. The highest reality, the supreme reality. "Ipsum esse," Thomas Aquinas says — "the sheer act of to be itself." At the summit of all possible goods, there is the summum bonum of God.
The greatest commandment is to order your life toward that good. What's our basic problem? We order our lives toward lesser goods. Now, that's not denying that they're good, nor that we should pay no attention to them. It's just that you don't order your life and your powers in the direction of anything less than God. What goes wrong with us? That — that's Augustine's diagnosis. "I mistake a creature for the Creator." You should love the Lord your God, the summum bonum, with your whole mind, whole heart, whole soul.
St. Bernard's Three Levels of Love
So the first problem we're dealing with implicitly is distraction by lesser goods. But press it even further: "You shall love the Lord with everything in you." Here's how St. Bernard of Clairvaux — by the way, one of the great masters of the spiritual life — puts it. I remember my thesis director in Paris, Michelle Corbin, a great theologian and a great specialist in Bernard. We read a lot of Bernard when I was a student in Paris, and he loved him.
Here's Bernard's take on the goal of the spiritual life: "Solum dilige deum, propter ipsum solum." That means to love God alone for the sake of God alone. "Solum dilige deum, propter ipsum solum." Love the Lord your God — yes — for the sake of God alone.
What does he mean? Well, maybe you're not distracted by lower goods, but you're loving God not with your whole heart, soul, and mind — you're playing a kind of game whereby you're loving God for some other reason. He makes a helpful distinction here, echoed in a lot of the spiritual teachers. He distinguishes between the kind of love that a slave has for his master, the kind of love a student has for his teacher, and the kind of love that a spouse has for his spouse.
Let's take a slave who obeys his master, exhibiting thereby a kind of love, a kind of ordering toward his master. But it's done out of fear, basically — if I don't obey this master, he's going to punish me in some way. It's a servile fear. Then think of a student vis-à-vis a teacher. Maybe the student really admires the teacher and listens to him and attends to him. Why? Because he wants something out of the teacher — wisdom, direction, maybe a higher status in society. It's higher than the slave's fear of the master, but it's still a kind of self-regarding affection.
And then there's the love between spouses. They don't fear each other. They're not trying to get something out of each other. Rather, they're living utterly for each other — loving each other for their own sakes. The husband says, "I love you because of you." The wife says to her husband, "I love you because of you, for your sake, not for mine." That's real love.
Solum dilige deum — love God alone — propter ipsum solum — for his own sake, for him alone.
Applying the Distinction to God
Apply this analogy to God. Are there people who love God in a servile way? Yes — they're afraid of him. They're ordered to him and willing to obey him, but not because they love him, but because they're afraid of hell, afraid of how God might punish them, afraid of what might happen if they don't obey.
Is that okay to some degree? Yes. At the beginning of the spiritual journey, perhaps that's something you've got to pass through. Let's say somebody is living a life of terrible sin and they're drawn out of it because of a fear of damnation — that's better than being sunk in a life of sin. But you see how it's a pretty low-level love. It's a servile relationship to God.
Or are there people who love God the way a student loves a master — because they want something out of God? Maybe it's heaven, eternal life, some benefit. If I love God, then my life will be easier. I'm going to get some benefit from God. I've spoken to you before about this: the goal of the spiritual life is not to love the benefits of God, but to love the will of God. So we're a step above the servile relationship — it's not just fear of going to hell — but we're still not loving God for the sake of God alone.
Then there's the highest love, which is like the love between two spouses. I love God not because I'm afraid of what might happen if I don't. I love God not because I'm trying to get something out of God. I love God propter ipsum solum — for himself alone. I'm lost in the wonder and the beauty and the majesty of God. I'm not fearful, I'm not acquisitive, I'm not trying to get something out of it, I'm not trying to prevent something. I love God for God's sake alone. That's what we're talking about. That's the highest kind of love.
St. Catherine of Siena's Three Kisses
You find a similar thing in the great Catherine of Siena. She talks about the kiss of the foot — someone comes to Christ in abjection and penitence in their sin and kisses the feet of Christ. Then there's the kiss of the hand — that's someone who has moved beyond just that servile level but wants to be a disciple, wants to follow the master. And then finally she says there's the kiss of the mouth — what is that but the kiss of intimacy with God, loving God alone for the sake of God alone.
"I No Longer Call You Servants, but Friends"
Here's the way to put this whole thing. Remember the Lord says to his disciples the night before he dies, "I no longer call you servants, but friends." I put to you that's one of the most extraordinary statements in all of the religious literature of the world. Because to be a servant of God — okay, every religion talks about that. To be God's slave or to be God's disciple — those are those first two levels. But when Jesus says, "I no longer call you mere servants, but friends," that's not the kiss of the feet or the kiss of the hand — that's the kiss of real intimacy with the Lord. That's what God wants.
Here's something extraordinary — you'll find it in some of the saints in their kind of mystical reverie. Saints will say, "Lord, if it's your will, if I can save somebody from hell, I'll go there in their place." Now, you can't really mean that in the full sense, because hell means abandonment by God. But you see how beautiful, how weird and strange that statement is. "Lord, I love you so much, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not trying to get something out of you — I just love your will so much that I'll go to hell to save somebody." That person is in a qualitatively different place.
The place of loving God with the whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind — loving God for himself alone. What's the greatest commandment? Lord, sum up what the spiritual life is all about — it's that. Not fear, not acquisitiveness, but falling in love with the will of God for its own sake.
And God bless you.