Love is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops
PART I God's Plan For Love
(5.) THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT: LOVE
21. God made man and woman in order that they might love. God's first
and greatest commandment is: "You must love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind". The second
commandment, inseparable from the first, is: "You must love your neighbour
as yourself" (Matthew 22: 37-39). This is the whole of
our purpose in the world. It is the reason why we exist.
22. The Bible is through and through the story of God's unending
love for men and women and of our vocation to love God and to love our fellow-men.
Every page of the New Testament is the record of divine love in search of
answering human love. The saints repeated it in every age: "Love is
all"; "It is enough to love"; "In the evening of life
we shall be judged on love"; "Oh, I do not regret, not for one
moment do I regret, having given my life to love". Our judgement will
be totally concerned with whether we have loved and how we have loved. Our
whole vocation is to be true to the two-fold commandment of God, to love
Him and to love others. The two commandments are never to be separated.
We must love God in Himself. We must love God in others. We must love others
in God. "On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets
also" (Matthew 22:40).
23. Sexual morality is not different in kind from morality in general. It
is only a particular application of general moral principles to the sexual
domain. Sins against chastity are invariably accompanied by sins against
other virtues also, especially fidelity, truthfulness and justice. Especially,
they are sins against charity. The virtue of chastity is the carrying out
in one's sexual life and sexual relationships of God's greatest commandment
of charity. St Paul says:
- All the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, you shall
not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and so on, are summed
up in this single command: You must love your neighbour as yourself.
(Romans 13:9)
Churchmen have unfortunately at times concentrated on sexual sins more than
on other forms of immorality, such as injustice and oppression, avarice
and cruelty. Yet sexual morality is an inseparable part of the Church's
proclamation of justice and charity and of the dignity and sacredness and
rights of the human person.
24. The Church's whole moral teaching about sex is above all the application
to sexuality of God's greatest commandment of charity. Pope John Paul II
has called it a programme for "putting love into love" . The mystery
of sexuality is a particular instance of the mystery of God's eternal love.
The wonder and the beauty of sexuality come from its origin in God's creative
love and from its destiny to fulfil God's plan of love. The Christian teaching
about love between the sexes has for its constant aim and purpose to protect
the original beauty and holiness of sexual love and to prevent it from becoming
spoiled by sin. This requires a constant effort of self-knowledge and of
self control. If Christ's teaching about love came easily to flawed human
nature, Christ would not have termed it a precept or command. Yet, to love
as Christ taught us is true freedom and fulfilment for the human person.
God is the loving Father who made our hearts for love, and who knows the
kind of love which alone will satisfy our hearts.
Net publishing courtesy of the Newman Center at Caltech
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