Ex. 22:20-26; Ps. 18: 2-4, 47,51; 1 Thes. 1:5c-10; Mt. 22:34-40

I love you!  These three magical words we all love to hear.  There is a hand sign to say it with one gesture.  It is in sign language the “I”, “L”, and “Y” all together to say “I love you”.  When our children are little, we say it to them all the time then they grow up and we say a lot of things but sometimes forget to say “I love you”.  Same thing for couples, we repeat it to each other often before marriage and then like tradition we say it for our anniversary once a year.  We sometimes ruin the message when we say “I love you, BUT”.  The one who hears “BUT” goes from being open to love to being guarded wondering “but now what?” 

I love you is unconditional until we say “but”, and now realize it comes with expectations and standards.  Did you ever think God’s love is conditional?  That is a radical thought.  I will come back to that idea later.  Today God says, “keep my word”.  The essence of the great commandment is love him by keeping his word.  Love of God and neighbor is evident by keeping not simply our word but his word.  Our word is subjective based on our thoughts and feelings.  It is as diverse as we are.  God’s word is a covenant, a commitment for all time to love us in truth, goodness, beauty, and unity.  If love is the goal and God is love then God is the fulfillment of love in all of its truth, goodness, beauty and unity. 

I was viewing EWTN when an animation came out with the headline “I am Catholic…BUT”.  It gave a litany of things people say such as “I am Catholic BUT I believe in abortion; I am Catholic but I don’t believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist; I am Catholic but I don’t believe in going to confession with a priest.  If you remove the flesh of a person you are left with a dead skeleton.  When we remove the teaching of the Church coming from the word of God, we strip the flesh off the body and kill the soul.  

The message of the animation was to explain the church position on all the “BUTs” and concludes with we cannot call ourselves “Catholic” as “cafeteria Catholics” who pick and choose the “word” we want to follow.  This is not love of God if we cannot keep his word.  Why don’t we keep his word when it has been proven to represent the essence of love?  The reason is here before us with Jesus on the cross.  To love God is to follow in sacrifice for him as he did for us. 

The words “I love you God” lose their meaning apart from his word.  The words “I try to go to Mass on Sundays BUT God is everywhere so it is ok if I miss, God knows.”  Yes, God knows and that is the hard reality that God knows when we are not faithful to his word.  Churches were forced to stop holding Mass with the pandemic and now are slowly allowing limited numbers to gather.  Who will join in the sacrifice to return to Mass and who will remain away thinking “God knows”? 

In Thessalonians, St. Paul says “You know what sort of people we were…, so that we have no need to say anything.”  What sort of people were they?  They not only preached the word they sacrificed themselves for the word.  They let their actions speak for the love they gave for Christ and for the community.  We say, “I love you God but” with how many buts added on?  What about God’s unconditional love?  Remember I asked earlier “Did you ever think God’s love is conditional?” God’s unconditional love comes with expectations and standards as a sign of love.

God’s love is unconditional even though we sin when we fail to keep his word “BUT” we are the ones who become conditional with our love until we become unrecognizable.  Consider couples who after many years of marriage end in divorce and one of the reasons is because we believe something changed in the relationship and we say “that is not the person I married”.   Let us hope and pray God does not look at us and say “that is not the person I created you to be”.

When a baby is an infant our love for them is unconditional and sacrificial.  We sleep with our ears alert for any sound and as they grow up, we don’t stop hovering over them as helicopter parents “but” we still have expectations of them as they grow.  Keep my rules we tell them.  We will always love. It is because we love them that we also have our expectations of them and enforce our consequences for their actions.  Love has expectations because it is relational and requires for there to be truth, “just don’t lie to me”; goodness “no temper tantrums”, beauty “comb your hair”; and unity “we all go to church on Sunday.”  “But why?”  It is hard being a parent, imagine how it is for God as his children with all our “BUTs”. 

Today Jesus in the gospel connects two passages from the Mosaic Law, love of God from Deuteronomy 6:5 with love of neighbor from Leviticus 19:18.  He makes it clear that all the 600 laws plus in the scripture can be summarized in these two commandments and you cannot have without the other.  If we claim to love God then we keep his word by demonstrating our love for neighbor that is every other human being is the evidence of our love of him.  Two sides of the same coin, love of neighbor fulfills our love of God. He is the head and we are the followers. 

Some say there is no hell because of God’s unconditional love.  God says, “keep my word”.  The first reading from Exodus reminds us the God of love is also the God of justice with consequences.  God’s love is unconditional without “BUTS” and with expectations and consequences.  Love is not separate from justice.  Love hurts just look at the crucifix and see the pain of love.  If you doubt that try raising a child and see how it hurts.  Jesus answers the group of Pharisees and Sadducees stating the commandments require “all” of our heart, soul, and mind.  No holding back no “BUTs”. 

Always remember, God loves you!