34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Born in 1568, the eldest son of an Italian noble family, Aloysius (the Latin form of his name, Luigi) decided at an early age that he wanted to be a priest. Not surprisingly, his family discouraged him but he persisted. In 1585, having given up all claims to his inheritance, he joined the Society of Jesus. In 1591, in response to a plague in Rome, the Jesuits started a hospital to care for the sick. Aloysius volunteered to work there. He went on the streets, begging for money to support the sick, he carried the dead and he tended those with the plague. On 21 June 1591, he died from the plague himself, at the young age of 23. He is the patron saint of plague victims, of those with AIDS and of their caregivers. He is also the patron saint of Christian youth.
In honor of Aloysius’s great offering of himself for others, the gospel for his feast focuses on love. It begins with Jesus debating a specialist of the Law (and representative of the Pharisees), in one of that group’s all too numerous hostile challenges. He tries to trap Jesus on an issue with regard to the Torah but Jesus speaks the truth which overcomes all the lawyer’s traps. In his response, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy, a text that pious Jews recited each morning and evening. They did so because they recognized that love of God and love of neighbor were not and are not an emotion, a feeling of affection for someone, but a way of life. It means thinking of others’ needs and laboring for them – as St. Aloysius did. We cannot order ourselves to feel a particular way about someone (indeed, St. Aloysius told his confessor that he was repulsed by the sick) but we can order our behavior. In verse 37, Jesus speaks of loving God with one’s heart, soul and mind which means that we should love him with every part of our being.
But this love does not exist in a vacuum for we cannot separate love of God from our every day life. Jesus was asked for one commandment but he gives two because the they cannot be separated. True love of God is shown in the way we treat our neighbors – and Jesus has been very clear that our “neighbors” include even those we hate. This is the only real sign of our love of God. Martin Luther argued that God needs nothing but our neighbor needs a great deal and thus true service to God always involves service to our fellow humans. Religion and ethics, then, should be viewed as one and the same thing. Our religious observances should come from within us, from our intimate relationship with God and not because we seek approval from others. If we truly love God then it will show in how we treat others – as it did for St. Aloysius Gonzaga.
St. Joseph's Paris: Bible Study Website 