Mark 12:28–31 with St. Catherine of Siena

“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’”

In the twelfth chapter of Mark’s gospel, a scribe confronts Jesus with a question that prompts one of Jesus’ most well known teachings: “Which commandment is the most important of all?” to which Jesus replies, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart… You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:28–29).

There are a lot of loves wrapped up here: love for God, love for self, and love for neighbor. Three distinct loves, but they are all interconnected, and St. Catherine of Siena helps us to see how. She records what Jesus said to her in prayer about this very passage: “It is your duty to love your neighbors as your own self. In love you ought to help them spiritually with prayer and counsel, and assist them spiritually and materially in their need—at least with your good will if you have nothing else.” Up to this point, she basically restates the gospel teaching and unpacks in more detail what this means: we should care for others both spiritually and materially, as we are able, and we are always able to will the good to the other, especially in prayer.

But she goes on, again in Jesus’ voice: “If you do not love me you do not love your neighbors, nor will you help those you do not love. But it is yourself you harm most, because you deprive yourself of grace. And you harm your neighbors by depriving them of the prayer and loving desires you should be offering to me on their behalf. Every help you give them ought to come from the affection you bear them for love of me.” The source of loving others truly and rightly is loving Jesus, because if we do not know and love Jesus, we will be unable to offer our neighbor the very greatest good: Christ himself. And if we cannot offer this greatest good, we cannot truly love them, for love wills the good of the other. Beyond this, Catherine flips our usual understanding of this passage by teaching that as we love our neighbor, so we love ourselves; consequently, in failing to love our neighbor, we also fail to love ourselves and we deprive ourselves of grace, as she writes.