Caring for others, appreciating their care for us
Matthew 22: 34-40 is frequently quoted in this blog: “The greatest commandments are…love the Lord your God….and….love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
There’s a lot that goes into living each aspect of love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. Loving God involves investing time and effort into a continuing relationship with God. Loving our neighbors requires getting out of ourselves to care for others in a myriad of ways, large and small. Loving others “as we love ourselves” requires that we live lovingly within ourselves (and to live by faith’s principles – including moving away from behavior that causes any trouble, even for ourselves).
How well do we put into practice loving other people? How well we care for other people is, surely, one of the greatest measures of how well we live our faith. So many aspects to being mindfully of other people’s welfare.
There’s a wonderful bumper sticker that says “Love your neighbor means everybody.” Fully living that bumper sticker requires bringing everything we learn in faith to the table. Truly being centered on kindness, thoughtfulness, caring, generosity, and unselfishness – in other words, focusing on loving the people around us – is what faith principles move us toward being. Christ said in Matthew 22:34-40, “All the Law and the demands of the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Robert Hayden’s haunting poem Those Winter Sundays speaks both to quiet love-in-action and to the pain of not acknowledging receipt of love-in-action. Taking in this thoughtfully observant poem requires action on our part – coming to more fully appreciate the people who care for us (and to say so!) as well as prompting us to better care for the people around us. Caring for others is so often done quietly!
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires ablaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake up and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
when the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a “Content Creator/Individual” member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).
