Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus responding to the Pharisee’s question on “which commandment in the law is the greatest.” It has always fascinated me how God places different views of the story’s meaning in a modern-day commentary. Some see the law as helping us be obedient to God, and therefore, it becomes a question of our discipline to obedience. This obedience can create a behavior of following familiar, predictable routines instead of finding ways to think fearlessly and creatively about ways to express our love for the Lord. Obedience of this kind is good but does not achieve the fullness we have given. Others have noted that this commandment cannot be lived out. We believe this because we struggle with the question, “Have I ever really loved in this way?” It’s not as if God gave us a simple commandment like going to church on Sunday. At some point, we have realized that this gift of love comes from the gift of life God has given us. This understanding lets us know that if we truly love ourselves in a non-egoistic sense, we can freely share this self-love with others for their benefit, not ours. Loving in this imperfect manner keeps us in utter reliance upon the mercy, compassion, and grace of God. We can never fully succeed by ourselves. Lastly, I am drawn to a personal favorite of how we understand this kind of love. The story goes that a famous violinist was being interviewed about a piece of music she would be playing and noted the beauty in its simplicity, yet she said it was a complicated piece to play. The reporter asked her what made something so simple so challenging. The violinist replied, “It’s hard to do what is so simple because simple does not mean it is easy.” The commandment to genuinely love God and also love their neighbor should be easy to comprehend and do. But if that were true, wouldn’t the entire world be different? What makes this simple commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” difficult? One aspect of the answer is that you can’t give away what you don’t have. In other words, if you don’t love yourself or honestly believe God loves you, then it is not easy to love your neighbor because you don’t love yourself. It takes an openness within us to understand what this “self-love” entails to become the unconscious and unconditional love lived out as easily as we breathe. You no longer “try” to love; you are love, just as the violinist discovered. That spiritual growth leads us into living the commandment awash in accepting a loving God who loves us so that the same sense of oneness of love can be freely given to our neighbor.