How do we love God? We are commanded to love God with our whole heart, soul and mind? This is the first commandment. From an incarnational reality, what does this mean? Well, Jesus implicitly gives the answer when he says the “second is like it” (Mt 22:34-40). Jesus means that to love one’s neighbor as one’s self is like the first commandment…the two are intimately connected and cannot be separated. To know what Jesus means by ‘love of neighbor’ we can turn to other teachings of Jesus: we are called to love our enemies; and if struck on one cheek we are to offer the other cheek; we are not to retaliate, either by word or by hand (Mt 5:43-44, Mt 5:40). To give another example, we have the story of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (Lk 10:29-37). Jesus tells this story in response to the question he is asked: ‘Who is my neighbor’? ‘My neighbor’ in Jesus’ mind and heart is expansive, it includes everyone: my enemy, the one who thinks different or whose views are different, who acts different, the one with whom I am in most conflict with right now, and even the one who would strike me down.
A popular Guest House recipe that is vegan, easy to mak...