James Talarico

And we as Christians are called to have that divine agape love for every person equally.

And that's hard to do.

I feel like I love my family more than I love other families.

I'm guilty of that.

I think we all are.

But the gospel is pushing us to move beyond that and to have the same love for a child on the other side of the world that we have for our child.

And it's almost impossible to do that, but it is what we are called to do.

Yes.

Scripture says you can't love God and hate other people.

That's in 1 John.

You can't love God and abuse the immigrant.

You can't love God and oppress the poor.

You can't love God and bully the outcast.

We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor who bears the divine image.

In the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God.

The commandment to love God and love neighbor is not from Christianity.

It is from Judaism.

And all Jesus is clarifying as kind of a radical rabbi is that neighbor is the person you love the least.

The parable of the Good Samaritan, maybe the most famous of Jesus's parables, I think we forget in our modern context how shocking it was.

Because today, being a good Samaritan just means helping people on the side of the road, which is good.