Today's Gospel is about the "HOW" of loving God and neighbor. Jesus says: "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind… The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself." He clearly underlines LOVE as the greatest commandment. 

It is seemingly a message we have grown up hearing, yet despite being dazzled by, it remains a slew of challenges to live out. The way of Jesus' discipleship, we may say, is nothing more than the practical application of loving God with our whole being and neighbor as self in response. 

These two loves are inseparable. Both two are the greatest. We cannot be in favor of one over the other. Loving God should mirror loving others. Loving others is a sign of having God in. Let us take the cross as the image of these two mutual and interrelated love. The two beams of the cross symbolize this love of God and love of neighbor. It is our call to balance the vertical dimension of our intimate relationship with God with the horizontal dimension of our relationship with others in mutual and loving service. Remove either vertical or horizontal love, and we will obtain none of love. Ultimately, there is no sign of the cross, and we are not true Christian Catholics. John, in his letter, explains marvelously: "If someone says he loves God but hates his brother, he is a liar. For he cannot love God, whom he has not seen if he does not love his brother whom he has seen." (1 John 4, 20)

Indeed, it is hard to deny that life experiences sometimes tell you "the absence" of God's love. But reflect well. The truth is it is not about the absence of God's love but rather our absence to God's love. For God cannot but love. 

Today's Gospel message is a call for us to balance in our Christian life the vertical dimension of our relationship with God in prayer with the horizontal dimension of our relationship with others in loving service.