Love Is the Real Test

Reflection Date: August 21, 2026 | Memorial of Saint Pius X, Pope
Daily Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Matthew 22:34-40

Children of God:
In the time of Jesus, some Jewish men wore a religious garment called phylacteries, also known as tefillin, small leather boxes containing handwritten passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. 

One box was tied to the forehead and another to the arm, following the biblical instruction to keep God's words close to the heart and mind. 

The phylacteries contained four passages: Exodus 13:1-10, Exodus 13:11-16, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and Deuteronomy 11:13-21. 

These passages spoke about remembering God's commandments, the Exodus from Egypt, loving God wholeheartedly, and remaining faithful to God's covenant. 

The passages were written on parchment and carefully placed inside the small leather compartments. 

For observant Jews, wearing tefillin became a tangible reminder that God's words were meant to shape the mind, the heart, and daily life. 

The practice therefore expressed the desire to carry God's commandments not merely in memory but physically upon one's person. 

Yet Jesus' teaching later showed that possessing or displaying religious reminders was not enough if the deeper meaning of God's commandments did not reach the heart. 

The real challenge was not simply to carry God's words on the body but to allow those words to become visible through one's actions. 

This makes the image of the phylacteries a meaningful backdrop for Jesus' teaching about what truly matters most.

In the gospel story of the lawyer's question, a religious expert approached Jesus and asked which commandment was the greatest. 

Jesus answered by placing love at the center of religious life: love of God with one's whole being and love of one's neighbor as oneself. 

He explained that all the law and the prophets depended on these two commandments. 

What are our inspirations for today?

First, loving God impels us to change the way we treat people.

Jesus did not separate love of God from love of neighbor. 

He placed the two together because a person cannot honestly claim to love God while deliberately treating other people with hatred, cruelty, contempt, or indifference. 

Religious devotion becomes meaningful when it produces compassion, patience, forgiveness, generosity, and concern for others.

This is where the image of the phylacteries becomes interesting. 

A person could literally carry sacred words on the forehead and arm, but Jesus' teaching challenged people to carry those words deeper into their lives. 

It is possible to have religious objects, know prayers, attend worship, and even speak about God frequently while still struggling to love the person sitting beside us.

Sometimes the most difficult person to love is not a stranger but someone in our own family, workplace, community, or ministry. 

It may be someone who disappointed us, criticized us, misunderstood us, or simply has a personality very different from ours. 

Loving God becomes concrete precisely in these ordinary encounters because they give us opportunities to practice patience, forgiveness, understanding, and kindness.

Loving God impels us to change the way we treat people.

Second, our faith must be seen in the people who experience our love.

Jesus made love of neighbor as important as love of God because faith was never meant to remain invisible. 

People should be able to experience something of God's goodness through the way we speak, listen, forgive, serve, and respond to them. 

Love becomes the evidence that our faith has moved beyond words.

This does not mean that loving everyone is always easy or that we must approve of everything everyone does. 

Genuine love can still correct, establish boundaries, and speak the truth. 

But even when we disagree with someone, we can refuse to humiliate that person, destroy that person's dignity, or treat that person as an enemy.

The challenge is especially important today because it is easy to express strong opinions while forgetting the human person behind those opinions. 

Social media, politics, arguments, and even religious discussions can quickly become places where people attack one another. 

Jesus brings us back to something simple and demanding: if we truly love God, that love must eventually become recognizable in the way another person experiences us.

Our faith must be seen in the people who experience our love.

As we reflect, we ask ourselves: Can the people closest to me recognize God's love through the way I treat them? 

Who is the person I find most difficult to love, forgive, or understand at this moment? What concrete act of kindness, patience, forgiveness, or service can I offer today?

Children of God:
Jesus gave us a simple test for the authenticity of our faith: look at how we love.

Our love for God becomes visible through our patience, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and respect for others. 

The people around us may never read the prayers we say, but they can experience first-hand the way we treat them. 

May the words of God move beyond our lips and become visible in our daily lives. 

And may our love become the clearest sign that God's word truly lives within us.