The way you describe your experience calls to mind certain passages in the Gospel, where Jesus was clear about putting one’s love for God before all else, even love of one’s immediate family. In Matthew 10:37, for example, Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
This may, at first, seem harsh, but Christian experience over many centuries has shown that when God is loved above all others, the result will be that others — parents, children, relatives, friends, neighbors, as well as strangers — are loved more than we otherwise could have loved them. This is because true love for God purifies us of selfishness and enables us to be total and sacrificial in our love for other human beings, as well.
On the other hand, Scripture also tells us, “Whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20).
So how do we reconcile these? One passage suggests loving God first, while the other seems to suggest that loving God is impossible without first loving our brothers and sisters. In practice, the love of God must come first in importance, but which comes first chronologically will depend on the unique way in which God acts in each of our souls.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 25:40 that in the final judgment, we shall hear, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” In other words, we might consider our brothers or sisters as a sort of “sacrament” of Jesus’ own presence with us.
Since we are creatures of flesh and blood, we need ways to encounter Jesus through our senses, to love him deeply and constantly. This is because Christian love is not a matter of emotion only, but also of decisions directed towards action, serving the true good of another. The First Letter of John also says (3:18), “Children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in deed and truth.”
If we encounter God in an intellectual way only, perhaps while reading about him or hearing the truths of Sacred Scripture and Church doctrine, we might be nourished mentally and satisfied intellectually. But for this belief to lead us to the total gift of self that God asks, we must experience his call to respond in concrete ways.
Sacraments and reminders of God’s presence evoke our gestures of devotion, such as kneeling, singing, or responding in unison with other voices joined in prayer. But even when we are not in a sacred physical space, we can also encounter Jesus and act upon our love for him in the person of our neighbor. We are not merely using our neighbor to find Jesus; it is Jesus himself who has told us he is present in each person, in a unique way.
Many great saints have given us vivid examples of their awareness of the palpable reality of Jesus’ presence in our neighbor. For instance, St. Teresa of Calcutta spoke of the destitute poor as “Jesus in his most distressing disguise.”
Chiara Lubich met a man in need of shoes, so she began to pray to Jesus saying, “Jesus, give us a pair of shoes, for you in that poor person.” Evidently, Jesus was pleased with this prayer because he answered it immediately: someone brought Chiara the exact size of the shoes needed.
It might be interesting to have been able to ask Mother Teresa or Chiara whether they developed their keen sense of how to serve Jesus by loving him first, before having met the poor, or rather by loving the poor to encounter Jesus in them.
But I think the way these women, and other holy people, conducted their daily lives, teaches us not to complicate things unnecessarily. The question of “which Jesus” to love first seems never to have arisen for them, because they were constantly seeking him in each present moment.
In other words, it seems that in any given moment, the way to love Jesus first is in the way he makes himself present to me precisely in this moment. If I am blessed with a moment of prayer in church, then it is his presence there that I direct my attention to. If I read the Scriptures, it is there that I hear his voice, which fills me with what I need to direct my thoughts and actions. And if I happen to be encountering a brother or sister in need, or who needs simply to be loved in some other way, then it is there that I love Jesus, according to his own word.
What is important is not the “before” or the “after,” but simply that in every moment, Jesus is there, in the way that he chooses. Loving him in each present moment is what counts.
Msgr. Michael Magee
(Living City, USA)
