We are commanded to love God with our whole heart, our whole being, and our whole strength. This command speaks to our unitary nature, spirit and body together, calling on us to love completely: with our whole being. Jesus repeats this commandment, calling it the greatest one, and adding to it a second part, to “love your neighbor as yourself,” which He says is like the first. If we love God, then, with all our strength, can we love the neighbor in any other way?

St. Vincent taught that “love is divided into affective and effective love” and that affective love is “a pleasure and tender feeling one has for the thing loved, as a father has for his child.” [CCD XI:35] This is the love of our hearts, a love which comes naturally and easily, a love that is expressed in our gentleness, our patience, and our words. Effective love, though, demands more from us; it demands our action and our work. It is, Vincent explains, “doing the things the loved person commands or desires.” [Ibid] Love, then, becomes not simply an emotion, but an act of will, and not our own will, but the will of the God who gave us this greatest commandment.

Our neighbors, our loved ones, often command or desire much from us, with needs that can be met not only with our possessions, but with our time, our talents, and ourselves of which we promise to give generously. [Rule, Part I, 2.5.1] “Who is my neighbor?” the young man asks Christ. In reply, Jesus shows him that there is always more than one neighbor: the one in need of help, and the one who helps. As neighbors ourselves, the love that we owe is not only gentle words of reassurance, but the work of binding the wounds and the time to set aside our own plans in order to share the burdens of our wounded neighbor. We love our neighbor as ourselves.

Love, agape, charity, is our motive. As Blessed Frédéric once explained, charity “is a fire that dies without being fed, and good works are the food of charity.” [82, to Curnier, 1834] This work, this love we offer, is our labor of love, not a mere task that can be hired out. “If you hire someone to do it,” St. Vincent explained, not only will it be costly, but this practice will grow, our gift of time and self will be reduced to material gift only, “and in this way your Charity will be reduced to failure.” [CCD I:70]

All this work, expending the “strength of our arms and the sweat of our brow” may leave us feeling depleted at times, just as our Conference treasuries may at times run low. Just as our financial assistance may pause until those treasuries are replenished, so our bodies must sometimes be refreshed in order to continue the work, for “even though God commands us to love Him with all our heart and with all our strength. His Goodness doesn’t, however, want us to go so far as to damage and ruin our health by these acts; no, no! God doesn’t ask us to kill ourselves for that.” [CCD XI:204]

We rest not in order to escape the work, but in order to continue it, because if they are to know we are Christians by our love, they must know our love by our work.

Contemplate

Am I fully committed to doing the work of love?

By Timothy Williams,
Senior Director of Formation & Leadership Development
Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA.