1. How do we learn to be Christians? The answer is that we have to learn to behave in a particular way: the way of love. It was to establish the community that would live in this way that Jesus was sent to us by the Father; and it is to be the people who live in this way that we are called to belong to the church today.
2. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
3. This is what is commanded to each of us; but it is given as the greatest commandment of 'The Law' - and The Law was the most valuable possession of a community, a people. We are each called to love God and neighbour, but we do this not as loners but as part of a community. Then, with each practising love of God and neighbour, the community will be like a transmitter showing the love of God and the new way of life he calls us to live to all around us.
4. People should be able to spot us as Christians by the way we live long before they have found out what beliefs distinguish us.
COPYRIGHT: THOMAS O'LOUGHLIN, LITURGICAL RESOURCES FOR THE YEAR OF MATTHEW.
