This Lent we invited you to go on mission, to take a spiritual checkup of the depth of your love for God. We have been using this key passage from Scripture to guide our reflection:

And one of [the Pharisees], a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:35-40 (emphasis added)

During the first four weeks of Lent, we examined the first and great commandment (1^st week, 2^nd week, 3^rd week, 4^th week). Today, we look at the second commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:39).

Jesus commanded His disciples to “Love one another even as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). It is through the love of Christ that we can love our neighbor, even the one that we find most irksome. Jesus also told His disciples, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (19:26). To be able to love as God loves, we must know God intimately. St. John the Evangelist tells us, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).

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