Gospel of Mark, chapter 12:30-31

There are laws, and laws. There was once a law in Iowa against women wearing corsets, and it was the official job of the corset inspector to go around poking women in the ribs to make sure they weren’t wearing one.

It is still a law in England for an Irishman to have a moustache. The reason? It was feared he might be a member of the IRA in disguise.

The problem with multiplying laws is that people get confused about what is truly important and what is only incidental. The Jews too had many laws; 613 of them in the Old Testament. Since the demands of one law often conflicted with another, Jewish teachers tried to work out a synthesis of the essentials of the law. This helped them to know which laws should enjoy priority in cases of conflicting interests.

So, when a scribe asked Jesus, “which commandment is the first of all?” (Mark 12:28), he was asking for Jesus’ own synthesis of the laws in the Old Testament. The scribe in question may have been trying to test Jesus or he may have been truly willing to learn. When Jesus answered him by stating that love of God and neighbor was the greatest of the commandments, he replied: “you are right, teacher; for to love Him with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, this is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:32-33). This response of the scribe suggests that he was probably experiencing conflict between love of neighbor and the need to fulfill all the demands of Temple worship. Jesus resolved the scribe’s problem and that of His listeners by assuring them that love for God and neighbor comes before the need for ritual observances.

The scribes and the Pharisees put ritual observance above love, and that was their problem.

They absolved people from taking care of their parents, for example, so long as they willed all their wealth to the Temple ( Mark 7:11-12). In this way they became clever in the observance of trifling matters to benefit themselves but deficient in what Jesus calls “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).

Many Christians still see worship of God in terms of observing laws and commandments. They go to church on Sunday to fulfill their “Sunday obligation.” They observe their “Easter duty.” But, Jesus reminds us that whatever we do in church, in our families, and at work should flow, not out of a sense of compulsion, but out of love for God and neighbor.

Love is the only commandment. As St. Augustine puts it: “love and do what you like.”

Fr. Hugh Duffy