In the Gospel for Mass two Sundays ago, Jesus issues his most poignant and succinct teaching about how humans are to live in the world: "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 the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Since everything in the Christian and truly human life hinges on love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor, it would be worthwhile to ponder what this "looks like" in the concrete. One way of approaching the "greatest commandment" of total love for God, self, and other, is to think of this love as an energy that is "reactive and proactive"and "receptive and responsive."
When one thinks of the word, "reactive", one usually doesn't arrive at a positive valuing of the term. To be "reactive" can cannote being impetuous, impulsive, and "reactionary." However, this word can also refer to equally positive behaviors, especially when connected with the Great Commandment of love. When a person is reactive according to this commandment, they respond relatively easily and immediately to the needs and dignity of other persons. An example would be if someone were to buy lunch for a homeless person standing on the side of the road. To love "reactively" means being open and ready to meet the needs of others. Another way of fulfilling the Great Commandment is by loving "proactively." According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, it isn't enough to simply wait until someone in need comes across one's path; rather, the "bar of loving" is set at the height of looking, and even searching, for those in need of love. A number of stories told by Jesus in the New Testament depict God as a restless searcher for the lost, the lonely, and the needy. Chapter 15 of Luke's Gospel offers dramatic examples of how love at it's height is not only about reacting to the needs of others but proactively searching for the needy other. In a society that has gone to great lengths to create suburban enclaves of safety, security, and a facade of total well-being, searching for the needy other is absolutely imperative, especially since the truly desperate will rarely cross our paths while "holed up" in such places.
The great command to love can also be approached in terms of being "receptive and responsive." To be receptive implies an openness toward all, especially those who are in greatest need. To revert back to the example of the homeless person standing on the side of the road, it means withholding judgement and allowing ourselves to be moved with pity and compassion. Receptivity, in it's greatest expression, is really about hospitality: setting a long and wide table within ourselves for the divine mystery and sacred story which is at the heart of every person and creature who graces the face of the earth. As important as it is to be receptive to others in fulfilling the great command to love, hospitality only deepens in it's richness and beauty when we have an abiding awareness of those in need of our service. Just as it is necessary to not only be reactive but proactive in one's loving disposition toward God, self, and others, so it is essential that we not only provide hospitality but extend it through a responsiveness that reaches out to others both near and far. To be truly responsive requires an attentiveness to the heartbrokenness of the world. However, what makes such responsiveness exceedingly difficult in our society is our obsession with being entertained. Karl Marx once said that "religion is the opium of the masses." Today we might revise this by saying, "entertainment is the opium of the masses." To allow one's self to be entertained to the point of distraction deadens the capacity for sharing in, and responding to, the broken heartedness and struggle that is representative of the vast majority of the world's population.
The great command to love can be approached and understood in various ways. However it is approached and understood, to be truly effective in our lives it must be appropriated in as practical a manner as possible. We practically appropriate the command to love God, ourselves, and neighbor, when we form dispositions and attitudes that are reactive, proactive, receptive, and responsive to the world around us, especially that large swath of the world that is broken, needy, and crying out for justice.
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