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By. Msgr. Charles Fink
 When Jesus was asked which was the greatest of all God’s commandments, he answered: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:37-40). Elsewhere he said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). And, of course, he gave us what has come to be known as the Golden Rule: “…do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12).
In these commandments, Jesus teaches us why we are here and what we are made for. He tells us what it is to be truly human. He hints at what our destiny is. To paraphrase the third preface for the Nuptial Mass: Love is our origin. Love is our constant calling on earth. Love is our fulfillment in heaven.
This life, then is a school of love. Whether we major in marriage, the religious life, or remain single layfolk, our primary task is to learn to love God and one another as Jesus commands and demonstrates in his own life. Everything else is for the sake of this: all the other commandments, all the Church’s doctrinal and moral teachings, all of her sacraments, all our prayers and work and play. If they are not increasing our capacity to love God and one another, they are failing in their ultimate purpose. If we get love wrong, we flunk life. If we get love right, it doesn’t matter that we may be failures in the eyes of the world; we are successes in the eyes of God, who made us to love. “You first loved us,” wrote William of St. Thierry in the twelfth century, referring to God, “so that we might love you, not because you needed our love but because we could not be what you created us to be, except by loving you.” In the school of love, which is our life on earth, the first and most important lesson to learn is why we are here. We are here to learn to love God and one another.
Monsignor Charles Fink is the Director of Spiritual Formation at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, in Huntington, New York.
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