Three Loves
Fr. Paul D. Scalia on Sunday, October 25, 2026
Écoutez cet article
7 min
Well, he got more than he bargained for. In today’s Gospel (Matthew 22:34-40), all the scholar of the law wanted was a Gotcha! moment by catching Jesus in some controversy. As with the other tests, however, our Lord not only bests his opponents but rises above them and raises the discussion to a level they had not anticipated. Thus, the scholar asks for only one commandment. . .but he gets two. . .with a third slipped in between them. And he hadn’t bargained for that.
To appreciate this exchange, we should imagine ourselves in the place of the scholar of the law. Because we are like him: we put our Lord to the test and want to prove ourselves right. So, since we do what he does, we should also hear our Lord’s response as he does.
The Pharisee gets off to a bad start: “Teacher,” he says. Well, Jesus is more than a teacher. Yes, He teaches, but He does so with divine authority and unlike anyone else. He is the only teacher whose instruction deserves our complete trust. When we approach Him as a mere teacher, we make Him one among many. At that point, we’re not seeking His truth. We’re just getting input, asking His opinion as we do of many others.
“Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” The Pharisee had his own opinion about this. He had his favorite law in mind. Part of his testing Jesus was to see if He agreed. Which is what we do. We zero in on this, that, or the other aspect of the faith – our favorite – and make it everything. Maybe it’s doctrine, or the liturgy, or serving the poor, or changing the culture, or. . .well, whatever. But instead of having our own ideas about this, we should want our Lord to teach us what is the greatest.
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This commandment is drawn from the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:5), which devout Jews recited several times daily. It proceeds from Israel’s unique belief in the one God. Jesus calls this commandment not only the greatest but the first. It’s not just better than the others but the font of all of them because it flows from the very being of God, Who Himself is one, undivided, and loving.
The commandment has a beauty, simplicity, and grandeur that draws us in. It also has an absoluteness that’s often lost on us. It commands the Israelites – ever tempted to divide themselves between the Lord and the more practical and indulgent gods around them – to undivided devotion.
Christ among the
Pharisees by
Jacob Jordaens, c. 1665 [The Phoebus Foundation, London, England]
Explicit polytheism is not a present reality to us as it was to them. But the commandment holds just as well. Like the Israelites, we divide our devotion and hedge our bets. We diversify our spiritual portfolio (as it were) by dividing up our heart, mind, and soul, investing portions of them here and there, but never entirely in God. Sure, we place some of our trust in Him. . .but also in our own power, our resume, our finances, etc. The one and undivided God deserves more – He has a right to a whole and undivided response.
And because He is love, the response to Him must be love. It cannot be – as perhaps the Pharisee and we would like – mere external observance. It must be a response from the center of man himself, from his heart, the source of love. It’s the first and greatest commandment in this sense too, that it centers our love on Him and so determines all other human acts. Remember Saint Augustine’s line: Dilige et quod visfac – Love, and do what you want. If our love is properly ordered – heart, soul, and mind given entirely to God – then all other loves will follow.
Which brings us to the second commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Notice that this contains not one but two loves: for neighbor and for self, but not in that order. The phrasing indicates that love of self sits between love of God and love of neighbor. In the proper ordering of loves, we proceed from love of God to love of self. We love ourselves because in loving God we should love what He loves. Since we are most immediate to ourselves, we are the first recipients of that love.
Self-love is tricky. Some struggle with it because they cannot believe that God loves them. Others struggle to believe that God loves them not because of their perfections (He has no need of them) but despite their imperfections. They think that God loves them because they are good when in fact, they are good because God loves them.
All of which emphasizes the absolute priority of love of God. Until and unless we are in that relationship with Him, we don’t know how to love ourselves properly. And that defect (or excess!) of self-love means we won’t know how to love our neighbor. As God teaches Saint Catherine of Siena in The Dialogue, we love others with the same love with which we know ourselves to be loved.
“You shall love your neighbor. . .” Only now do we come to the commandment that many think is first. The first two loves are prior because only by being in a right relationship with God can we know that we are loved and how to love others. Our neighbor is not lovable for his own sake. He’s lovable because God loves him – and so should we. But until we love God, we won’t know how to love our neighbor any more than we know how to love ourselves.
Imagine our Lord’s gaze as He gives His answer. His words are more than a response and rebuke. They are an invitation to look at Him – and to behold in Him the God calling out for our love, Who has created us for His love, and Whom we love in our neighbor.
