Jesus Christ gave us the ordo amoris—the order of love—when asked by the scribes and Pharisees about which commandment was first of them all. Responding, He said:
The first is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment great than these. (Mark 12: 29–30, also Matthew 22: 37–40)
But it was St. Augustine who first provided the first reasoned statement about this “order” in his treatise On Christian Doctrine. There the Doctor of Grace attempted to explain how we can love other things (chiefly our neighbors and ourselves) while we love God with all our hearts, and souls, and minds, and strength.
It may appear that Augustine’s ascending account would have us pass over what is right in front of us (especially our neighbor). On the contrary, however, everything is loved in the “whole current” of love for God, since God is the one in whom everything can find its rest.
One should attend also to the descending moments in Augustine’s treatise, where God Himself has become the neighbor. Indeed, in the Gospel accounts, Christ’s statement about the ordo amoris is followed immediately by the question about his origin: “Whose son is he?” In short, if he is the Son of God, not just the son of David, then He is God become neighbor! The two commandments converge in Him. Here is the first meaning of the “Good Samaritan,” since the neighbor is the one who shows mercy to the man lying on the road dead, namely us. If God has become our neighbor, it follows that we who are “in Him” are neighbor to others “lying on the road.”
The fact of the Incarnation is fundamental for seeing that loving God with one’s “whole heart, soul, mind, and strength” is inclusive, not exclusive; since to love God as neighbor is to love the human nature that “has a place at the right hand of the Father.”
The following excerpts were selected from On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine (trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. [New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1958]).
This is the divinely instituted rule of love: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” He said, and “Thou shalt love God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. “Thus all your thoughts and all your life and all your understanding should be turned toward Him from whom you receive these powers. For when He said, “With thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind,” He did not leave any part of life which should be free and find itself room to desire the enjoyment of something else. But whatever else appeals to the mind as being lovable should be directed into that channel into which the whole current of love flows. Whoever, therefore, justly loves his neighbor should so act toward him that he also loves God with his whole heart, with his whole soul, and with his whole mind. Thus, loving his neighbor as himself, he refers the love of both to that love of God which suffers no stream to be led away from it by which it might be diminished. (19)
[W]hen he to whom the precepts were shown and to whom it was said that all the law and the prophets depend on them asked, “And who is my neighbor?”, the Lord told of a certain man who went down from Jerusalem into Jericho and fell among thieves, and having been gravely wounded by them, was left injured and almost dead. And He taught that no one was a neighbor except the one who was merciful in healing and caring for the wounded man, putting it in such a way that the questioner himself acknowledged the truth when he was asked. Then Our Lord said to him, “Go, and do thou in like manner.” Thus we should understand that he is our neighbor to whom the office of mercy should be shown if he needs it, or would be shown it in the event that he did need it. It follows that he also is our neighbor who in turn shows this office to us…. Our Lord Jesus Christ wished to be called our neighbor. For our Lord Jesus Christ signified himself to be the helper of the man lying dead in the road afflicted and abandoned by thieves. And the prophet says in his prayer, “As a neighbor and as an own brother, so did I please.” (25–26)
Although He is our native country, He made Himself also the Way to that country. (13)
[Christ] wished to assume flesh not only for those arriving at their estate but also to prepare the way for those setting out at the beginning of their journey…. Thus He says, “I am the way, and the truth and the life;” that is, you are to come through me, to arrive at me, and to remain in me. When we arrive at Him, we arrive also at the Father—since by an equal another equal is known—binding and, as it were, cementing ourselves in the Holy Spirit through whom we may remain in the highest good, which is also immutable. Thus, I may be understood that nothing should hold us on the road, for the Lord Himself, although He saw fit to become our road, did not wish to hold us upon it, but wished that we pass on, lest we cling in infirmity to temporal things, even though He took them up and wore them for our salvation. Rather let us run through them quickly that we may be worthy to approach and to reach Him who freed our nature from temporal things and made a place for it on the right hand of the Father. (29–30)
St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) is a Doctor of the Church.
