Can love be commanded? At first the idea may seem contradictory. We tend to think of love as something spontaneous, while a command appears to impose an obligation from outside. Yet some obligations are not opposed to love at all. We recognize, for example, that we ought to love our parents and those who have cared for us, even though genuine affection cannot simply be forced. The commandment to love God becomes understandable in the same way, but on a far deeper level. It is not an arbitrary demand imposed by a distant authority. It is the response owed to a love that precedes our very existence.
The Christian life begins with the discovery that God has loved us first. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Before we had done anything to deserve his love, God created us, called us into friendship with himself and gave his Son for our redemption. His love is not a reward for our goodness. It is the foundation upon which our entire life rests.
When this truth begins to penetrate our heart, the commandment to love God changes its character. We no longer see it primarily as a burden placed upon us but as an invitation to respond to a gift greater than anything we could have asked for. Our whole existence has been received. Life, grace, forgiveness, our vocation and the promise of eternal life all come from a God who has taken the initiative. Love for God is therefore fundamentally a response.
This also helps us understand the commandments. They are not arbitrary restrictions placed upon human freedom. They show us how freedom reaches its fulfilment in love. Christ summarizes the whole law in the love of God and neighbour because every commandment protects or expresses some dimension of that love. Honouring our parents, respecting human life, living chastity, speaking truthfully and respecting what belongs to others are not unrelated rules. They teach us how to love God within the concrete reality of human life.
The first commandment gives unity to all the others. We are called to love God with our whole heart, soul and mind. This does not mean that we must constantly experience intense religious emotion. Love includes affection, but it is deeper than feeling. We love God when we place him first, seek his will and allow our choices to be shaped by our friendship with him.
To love God, however, we must first allow ourselves to be loved by him. This can be more difficult than it sounds. We often prefer to think of the spiritual life mainly in terms of what we do for God: the prayers we say, the sacrifices we make, the commandments we keep and the work we accomplish. All these things matter, but Christianity begins with something we receive rather than something we achieve.
Allowing ourselves to be loved means opening to God precisely in those places where we are most conscious of our need. We receive his mercy where we have sinned, his forgiveness when we have failed, his strength when our own resources are insufficient and his grace when holiness seems beyond us. We stop approaching him as though we had to prove ourselves worthy before he could love us.
St. John expresses this with extraordinary simplicity: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son.” Our love will always remain a response to his. We may sometimes feel that our response is poor and inconsistent. We recognize that we do not love him with the whole-hearted generosity we desire. We may even discover that much of our prayer is self-interested, turning to God mainly when we need something from him.
This imperfection should not discourage us. It reveals how much we still need God. Human love itself often begins with a mixture of motives and gradually becomes more purified. Something similar occurs in our relationship with God. We may first seek him because we need consolation, help or protection. Over time, grace teaches us to love him increasingly for who he is rather than only for what he gives us.
Love therefore matures. There may be periods in which God’s presence feels vivid and prayer comes easily. Such moments can resemble the first enthusiasm of a friendship, when affection arises spontaneously. We should be grateful for them, but mature love cannot depend entirely upon them. Feelings change, while love must gradually engage our intelligence and will.
As our relationship with God deepens, we begin to want what he wants. This is one of the clearest signs that love is becoming mature. Christ teaches us to pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” These words are easy to repeat, but they express a profound surrender. Loving God means that we no longer ask him merely to bless the plans we have already made. We try to open our own will to his.
This does not mean that we cease to have desires or that we should be afraid to ask God for what we want. Christ himself teaches us to petition the Father. We can pray for health, success in a good undertaking, the resolution of a difficulty or any legitimate need. The deeper attitude of Christian prayer, however, remains one of trust: we ask sincerely while recognizing that God sees more than we do.
The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane gives us the perfect model. Faced with the Passion, he does not deny the terrible suffering before him. He prays that the cup may pass, yet adds, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” Love does not require us to pretend that suffering is easy or desirable. It enables us to place even our deepest desires within trust in the Father.
We often speak of “God’s will” as though every detail of life had been predetermined and our task were to discover a hidden plan. This can create unnecessary anxiety. God has clearly revealed his will in many essential matters. He wants us to love him, keep the commandments, grow in holiness and fulfil the duties that arise from our vocation and responsibilities. Within this framework, however, he also gives us genuine freedom.
Many important decisions do not have only one predetermined answer that we must somehow discover. We may have to decide what profession to pursue, whether to accept a particular job, where to live or among several legitimate possibilities for serving God. Prudence, prayer and good advice help us make these decisions, but God often leaves us free to choose responsibly.
There are other moments when we may sense a more particular call from God. A vocation to marriage, priesthood or another form of dedicated service may require serious discernment. Even here, discernment is not usually a matter of waiting for an unmistakable supernatural sign. God ordinarily works through grace, reason, circumstances, attraction toward a genuine good and the counsel of those who can help us see clearly.
Love makes us available to God without turning our spiritual life into anxious guesswork. We ask what he wants, but we also trust the freedom and intelligence he has given us. A child who loves his father does not need detailed instructions for every step of the day. He knows the values of the family and acts freely within them. Christian freedom has something of this filial character.
The more we love God, the more our freedom becomes capable of choosing the good willingly rather than merely submitting to it. At first, a commandment may feel like an external limit. With growth in virtue, we begin to see the wisdom within it. What once seemed restrictive becomes the path toward a fuller freedom.
This transformation is gradual because our desires are not perfectly ordered. We want God, but we also want comfort, recognition, control and many other things that can compete with him. The spiritual life involves allowing grace to put these loves in their proper order.
The first commandment therefore requires more than avoiding formal idolatry. We may never bow before a statue of a pagan god, yet created things can still take God’s place in our heart. Money, pleasure, success, power, reputation and even our own autonomy can become false gods when we expect them to provide the security or fulfilment that only God can give.
These goods are not necessarily evil. Money allows us to provide for legitimate needs and help others. Pleasure belongs to many good human experiences. Success can result from work well done, and responsible authority is necessary in society. The problem begins when a limited good becomes an ultimate one.
Our heart is made for something greater than any created reality can provide. St. Augustine expressed this in words that have echoed through Christian history: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” When we ask money, pleasure, achievement or human approval to satisfy the deepest hunger of the heart, they inevitably disappoint us.
This disappointment can become a grace if it teaches us to seek God more deeply. We often discover the insufficiency of false gods only after they have failed us. Success may arrive without bringing the happiness we expected. Possessions may multiply while our desires grow even faster. Human approval may prove unstable. The experience can be painful, but it exposes the limits of created things.
Detachment does not mean despising these goods. We receive them gratefully while refusing to make them the foundation of our happiness. We enjoy what God gives us without demanding that any created thing take his place.
This freedom becomes especially important when suffering enters our life. It is relatively easy to speak of loving God’s will when events correspond to our hopes. Illness, injustice, bereavement, failure or other forms of suffering confront us with a more difficult question. How can we continue to love and trust God when what happens is painful and seems contrary to what is good?
Christian faith does not require us to call evil good. Illness is not good simply because God permits it. Injustice remains injustice. Sin and suffering are real evils. God’s providence means something deeper: no evil escapes his power to bring forth a greater good, even when we cannot yet see how.
The Passion of Christ is the supreme revelation of this mystery. The crucifixion was an act of terrible injustice, yet through it God brought about the redemption of the world. The worst evil became, through divine love, the occasion of the greatest good. This does not explain every particular suffering, but it gives us a foundation for trust.
When suffering comes, loving God may therefore mean remaining open to him even when we do not understand. We can ask for relief and take every reasonable means to overcome what is wrong. At the same time, we refuse to let suffering close our heart to God.
This trust is not always accompanied by consolation. We may feel confused, afraid or even abandoned. Faith allows us to hold onto what God has revealed about himself when our emotions tell us something different. The Cross shows that apparent abandonment can coexist with the deepest divine action.
Christ himself entered suffering rather than remaining distant from it. In him, God has known hunger, fatigue, rejection, physical pain and death. When we suffer, we are not speaking to a God who observes human pain from outside. We turn to the crucified and risen Christ.
Our love can become especially deep in these moments because it is purified of self-interest. When everything goes well, we may love God partly because of the gifts we are receiving. When those gifts are absent and we continue to trust him, our love becomes more clearly directed toward God himself.
This does not mean that we should seek suffering. Christianity is not a cult of pain. Christ healed the sick, comforted the sorrowful and taught us works of mercy. We should relieve suffering whenever we reasonably can. But when suffering cannot be removed, love can prevent it from becoming spiritually meaningless.
We can unite what we suffer to Christ and ask him to use it for good. Sometimes suffering increases our compassion for others. It may detach us from illusions of self-sufficiency or teach us what truly matters. At other times we may see no particular fruit at all. Even then, we can entrust what we do not understand to God.
Love of God therefore requires trust in his goodness. This trust grows as we come to know him more deeply. We cannot love an abstraction. Christian love is directed toward the living God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
The Gospels are one of the principal places where we learn who God is. In Christ we see God’s compassion toward the sick, patience with sinners, tenderness toward the weak and determination to seek those who are lost. Jesus does not merely speak about divine love; he embodies it.
Prayer allows this knowledge to become personal. We speak with Christ about our life, bring him our desires and failures, listen to his words and learn to recognize his presence. Love grows through this repeated encounter.
The sacraments make God’s love present to us in an even deeper way. In Confession, we do not merely think about forgiveness; we receive it. In the Eucharist, Christ does not merely remind us that he loves us; he gives himself to us as food.
The Eucharist reveals the logic of divine love: self-gift. “This is my body, which is given for you.” The more we receive Christ with faith, the more we learn that love means giving ourselves in return.
Our response takes shape in ordinary life. Love for God is not confined to explicitly religious acts. If we love him, we seek to please him in our work, relationships, use of time and treatment of others. The first commandment reaches into everything because nothing in our life is outside our relationship with God.
This is why love of God and love of neighbour cannot be separated. St. John tells us that anyone who claims to love God while hating his brother is a liar. The invisible God has placed visible people before us as concrete recipients of our love.
We may find it easier to experience devotion in prayer than to be patient with someone who irritates us. Yet our treatment of that person reveals something important about the authenticity of our love for God. Charity becomes real through forgiveness, service, understanding and the willingness to put another person’s good before our convenience.
At the same time, love for neighbour must remain rooted in God. If we depend entirely upon human affection, gratitude or approval, our generosity becomes fragile. People do not always respond as we hope. They may misunderstand us, fail to appreciate what we do or even repay good with ingratitude.
Love of God gives us a deeper reason to continue loving. We serve others because they are loved by him and because Christ identifies himself with them. This does not eliminate the natural desire for affection, but it frees us from making human response the condition of our generosity.
The same love also gives order to self-love. Christianity does not teach us to despise ourselves. Christ commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves, which presupposes a proper love of self. We receive our own life as a gift from God and care for it responsibly.
Disordered self-love appears when the self becomes the centre around which everything else must revolve. We insist on our plans, comfort, reputation and preferences even when love asks us to give way. Loving God gradually frees us from this confinement because it gives us something greater than ourselves to live for.
This freedom does not come all at once. Our love remains imperfect and mixed with self-interest. We should not be surprised by this. God works patiently within us.
We may sometimes become discouraged because our affection for God seems weak. We hear the saints speak of burning love and compare their experience with our distracted prayer. Yet love should not be measured primarily by emotional intensity.
A person may feel little consolation and still love God deeply by remaining faithful to prayer, resisting temptation, fulfilling duties and serving others. Another may experience strong religious emotion while remaining unwilling to change. Feelings can accompany love, but fidelity reveals its depth more reliably.
We can ask God for greater affection and devotion. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel his presence more vividly. But we should receive consolation as a gift rather than treating it as proof that our spiritual life is successful.
Periods of dryness can even purify love. When prayer gives little emotional satisfaction and we continue because we want to remain with God, our fidelity becomes less dependent on what we receive. We learn to seek the Giver rather than merely his gifts.
This is another way of allowing ourselves to be loved. We accept that God knows how to lead us better than we know how to lead ourselves. Sometimes he consoles; sometimes he permits us to walk by faith without sensible reassurance. In both cases, his love remains.
Our task is to respond with the love we are capable of giving today. We should not wait until our motives are perfectly pure or our feelings perfectly aligned. Love grows through acts of love.
A brief prayer made when we are distracted, a commandment kept when temptation is strong, a duty fulfilled when we would prefer comfort, an act of forgiveness or a sacrifice accepted for another person can all become genuine acts of love for God.
These acts gradually educate the heart. What begins as obedience can become affection. What initially feels like sacrifice can become more spontaneous generosity. Grace works through repeated choices until our desires themselves begin to change.
This is the journey of Christian love: increasingly to want what God wants because we have come to trust and love him. It does not destroy our personality or freedom. It brings them toward fulfilment.
The saints show us this freedom. Their lives were very different because love did not make them identical. God’s grace brought each person’s gifts to maturity while freeing them from the selfishness that distorted those gifts.
We too become more fully ourselves as we love God. The false gods promise fulfilment but eventually enslave us because they demand more and give less. God asks for our whole heart but gives us back our freedom enlarged.
The commandment to love God is therefore not a restriction placed upon human happiness. It reveals the only object large enough for the human heart. We were created for communion with God, and nothing less can finally satisfy us.
This is why the first commandment is both demanding and liberating. It asks us to place God above every created good, but in doing so it allows us to enjoy created goods properly. When God is first, we no longer need to demand ultimate happiness from money, success, pleasure or other people.
We can receive them as gifts without turning them into gods. We can lose them without losing the deepest foundation of our life. We can use them in the service of love rather than becoming their servants.
Love of God thus brings order to everything else. It teaches us how to love ourselves, other people and the world without asking any of them to occupy the place that belongs to God alone.
We will spend our whole life learning this love. There will be moments of enthusiasm and periods of dryness, times when God’s will seems attractive and others when it costs us greatly. We will discover repeatedly that our love is imperfect.
None of this changes the fundamental truth with which the Christian life begins: God loved us first. His love precedes our success and remains the source of every response we can make.
Whenever we become discouraged by our weakness, we can return to this beginning. We do not have to create the love that sustains our relationship with God. We receive it. Grace enables us to answer.
Then the first commandment becomes less like an impossible demand and more like an invitation into the deepest purpose of our existence. God says, in effect: receive my love, live within it and learn to return it with your whole life.
Our response will never be perfect in this world, but it can become increasingly complete. We allow ourselves to be forgiven, guided and transformed. We learn to prefer God’s will to our own when the two conflict and to trust him when we do not understand.
Little by little, the restless heart begins to find its true centre. Created things remain good and beautiful, but they no longer have to carry the impossible burden of satisfying our deepest longing. We receive them from God and return them to him in thanksgiving.
St. Augustine’s words then become not merely a beautiful quotation but a description of our own experience: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” To love God is to discover that our freedom, our desires and our entire existence find their deepest fulfilment not in possessing more, but in receiving his love and learning to give ourselves back to him.
By the Via Virtutis team
Photo by Guilherme Gomes Dos Santos on Unsplash
