Current teachers of the law continue to struggle with the answer of Jesus to the question – “Which is the most important commandment in the Law?” It is clear from Jesus’ teachings that the most important commandment is that we should love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind – in effect, our whole being. The second commandment, which is like the first, is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. We must take note that this love for self and neighbor comes only second to love for God. We should love our visible self and neighbor as our means of loving the invisible God. Love of self and neighbor must be subordinated to the love for God and must never result in disobedience to the will of God.
Our love for ourselves and our neighbor sometimes tempts us to disobey the will of God when certain matters cause us inconvenience or hardship. We desire to plan the number of our children so that we could give them life of ease and comfort, provide them with good education for a better future. Many of our neighbors suffer destitution and could no longer afford to provide the means for a better life for their children. These are tempting situations which some of us use as excuses to disobey the will of God for the sake of love of self and neighbor.
Do we sometimes let our love for our neighbor, the poor, cause us to close our eyes to the will of God, to the extent of allowing them to kill the babies in their wombs because they would find it hard to support too many children? Or even to thwart the will of God to give life to their intended children through artificial contraception, for the sake of saving them from the inconvenience or burden of supporting those children?
