“You shall love the Lord your God… and your neighbor as yourself” (Lk 10:27; from Lk 10:25-37 on the good Samaritan )… Perhaps by “ loving your neighbor as yourself -even ”, unity will come…

Father Étienne DUMOULIN told us during Mercy Sunday ( ^2nd Sunday of Easter 2022), that this episode of the Gospel was characteristic of God’s Mercy towards us. God leans towards his wounded and powerless creature, almost dying, in the ditch. Mercy is then revealed as the goodness of God displayed towards his creature bearing the weight of an evil, whether it is an evil suffered or an evil, the consequence of a freely consented choice. Perhaps then, by approaching the brother in turn, the disciple will discover, through all that this will arouse in him, how much he himself is loved by God and does not realize what is this love…!

In fact, the one who receives baptism (and confirmation) becomes a new man. Its DNA is more marked by its belonging to God who gives it new life, than by its human antecedents, however explored they may be. It is through this love received that the disciple can in turn respond fairly: “ You shall love the Lord your God” … We can extend: by receiving the forgiveness , he learns to forgive… by listening to Word he learns to say God through his whole transformed life… and to listen too… even the brother…

The disciple welcoming this love even more, the Lord gives him the imperative to live it towards the one to whom he becomes close: “ You shall love your neighbor as yourself” … Now this can be read in 2 ways: either “ You will love your neighbor as you love yourself (and you cannot wish yourself harm), either ” You will love your neighbor as you yourself are loved by God / by God…” In this 2^th reading, the disciple is called to consent to the divine love of which he is in fact a beneficiary, and which God has deposited in him, in order to in turn love with this divine love whose characteristic is to give himself…

Hence the determining importance of the position of the disciple: will he, until the end of his life, want to be in an interior face to face with God, available to receive the Word of God which makes him live, and to fulfill his will to serve the brother? Whether this ‘brother’ deserves it or not, whether he is recognized as a ‘brother’ or as a simple ‘more or less hostile neighbor’, more or less fallen into the ditch of his life, was he golden… Unity in fraternal communion is then revealed as a gift for a heart recognizing itself as ‘merciful’.

It is by exercising this desire to serve the brother as God comes to serve his creature and give him life, that the disciple will then experience his own life as ‘mercy’ that the Lord will have allowed him to taste and put into practice. All the more reason to “love the Lord your God ”: He makes his disciple discover His Mercy by making him experience it towards others! Thus he will be able to taste the breadth, the height, the depth of God’s love [1] … how unworthy he is of it and how grateful he can then be for it!

P Rémi Griveaux, Ars

[1] Eph 3:18