These commandments, above all others, are presented today in Jesus’ response to the scribe. Bishop Robert Barron writes that law is finally about love, and the love of God and neighbor are inextricably bound to one another. Why are the two loves so tightly connected? Because of who Jesus is. Jesus is not just a human being, and he is not just God. He is the God-man in whom divinity and humanity come together. Therefore, it’s impossible to love him as God without loving the humanity he created and embraced. In The Art of Loving, Chiara Lubich writes that to love your neighbor as you love yourself, you must take it literally without qualification. In other words, not just general advice. The term “as” means precisely that. So, if I or someone else is in a particular situation, we must each experience it as though it were our own. Because when we start acting that way, people are struck by it; they are amazed and want to know what is happening. That allows us to explain why we treat our neighbors in that way, serving and reaching out to them. Many of those who ask about this then feel that they want to begin to try living that way themselves. That is the secret of evangelizing through what we do and how we act, not merely by what we say.