Ponder Points: Love As That Of Oneself

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

We sometimes treat the duty to love as a form of obligatory exchange, in which we love others on the basis of how much we love ourselves. And working within that frame, it seems that there is the tendency to impose a kind of limit or maximum on self-giving, making sure that they don't go outside or beyond the way we give ourselves. There is also the tendency for us to appropriate our own form of self-giving, that we expect others to act in the same way as we do, or to live in the way that we expect them to be.

But that, unfortunately, is not what the Lord meant when he said that we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In saying this, the Lord points out two important things. First, he calls for a recognition of our own selves' being. He is called to recognize the mystery that we are, that our whole selves are full of meaning, that there is more to it than the particulars that we have used to define ourselves. In saying that we ought to love ourselves, the Lord calls us to view our whole selves with a new set of eyes, with a perspective that accounts for the richness of our being as created. We are called to see the "beyond" that is in us, that we cannot be pinned down to anything we can say about ourselves: our identities, our past, our problems, our crises.

And with this view of our own selves as a mystery is the very basis of our own self-giving. Because we cannot box ourselves, all the more are we called towards an openness and acceptance of another who is radically different, and in that difference, radically the same as we are. To love the other is precisely to recognize the mystery of the other, to know and respect that she is different from us. To love is to respond to the call to recognize and cherish the other that we cannot reduce to our own way of understanding or to our own selves, and always be unconditionally open to her as she is, in the same way that we are called to open to who we are. Simply put, the second thing that the Lord calls us is to approach the other simply and precisely as another, standing outside the self yet as rich and as meaningful as the self. Only in the recognition of such difference can one respond towards the call to love, a recognition which the Lord has first and foremost recognized and shown to humanity.

And that is why we are called to love with all our soul, mind, and heart, because it takes great effort to genuinely love. We have the tendency to love what is pleasing to us, to what conforms to our standards, our categories, and our notions of other people; however, in these circumstances, we somehow forgot what we are actually called to do, which is precisely to transcend our own self-defined notions and let the mystery and meaning of the other captivate us by being open and patient to the other which shows herself. This mystery is precisely what will draw us towards giving more than what is expected economically, more than we can actually bear. It is then that we put our lives at risk for the sake of the other, precisely because we have allowed ourselves to be captivated by her.

Thus, it is only in recognizing our own being that we become aware of our called to do regarding the being of others.

It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern.

-Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est 18