Gospel (Mt 22,34-40) - At that time, the Pharisees, having heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, gathered together and one of them, a doctor of the Law, questioned him to test him: «Teacher, in the Law, what is the great commandment? ». He answered him: «“You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind”. This is the great and first commandment. The second then is similar to the one: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments."

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

«Teacher, in the Law, what is the great commandment?». Jesus' response is immediate and clear: love towards God and towards others is the pivot around which "all the Law and the Prophets" revolve. The religious currents of Judaism had codified 613 precepts, of which 365 were negative and 248 were positive. It was a mass of provisions, although not all of the same value. However, it was clear which was the first: «Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength" (Deut 6:4-5). Just as the precept of loving one's neighbor was known. The originality of Jesus' response lies not in the fact that he remembers both, but in connecting them so closely to the point of unifying them. The commandment regarding love for one's neighbor is assimilated to the first and greatest commandment on integral and total love for God, as it belongs to the same category of unifying and fundamental principle. Jesus states that the road to reach God necessarily crosses the one that leads to men. Love towards God and love towards others encompass the entire Law. Jesus was the first to observe this double commandment and remains the highest example to look to for loving God and others. Jesus put nothing before the love of the Father, not even his life. John, the evangelist, goes so far as to say that "we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers" (1 John 3:14). Not only that: God doesn't even seem to compete with love for men; in a certain sense he does not insist on the reciprocity of love (it is obvious that there must be). In fact, Jesus does not ask: "Love me as I have loved you", but: "that you love one another as I have loved you".