It is amazing to note how leaving out just one half of one verse of the Gospel can affect the Christian life for centuries.

All of us know by rote the command of Jesus that we must love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and we must love our neighbour.

But the second half of verse 31 is not usually quoted because, sadly, it is not as imbedded in our memory. It reads: ‘You shall love your neighbour AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF.’

There are very clear historical reasons why the second part of Jesus’ summary of the commandments was quietly forgotten. Given the chequered personal experience he had of his own body, St Augustine, in the fifth century, had very ambivalent feelings about the human body. He thought that, generally, it was to be feared as the instrument through which we would sin. He encouraged us to tame it through prayer, mortification and penance. Augustine’s ideas about the body held sway until Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and the Jesuit Theologians of the 15th century argued that while the body can lead us to sin, it is also a temple of the Holy Spirit and a vehicle of God’s love and grace.

In the 16th century Cornelius Jansen denounced Aquinas and the Jesuits and argued that Augustine held the correct Christian view. No matter what the Church did to denounce Jansen at the time, his thinking took deep root in Europe, the USA and missionary countries throughout the world. Jansenism, the belief that our body and its desires are evil and that we need to harshly mortify ourselves, is, tragically, still active in Christian thought today.

Jansenism is irreconcilable with today’s Gospel where Jesus tells us that the love of God, the love of neighbour and the love of self are the cornerstones of the Christian law. And the opposite must be true too. We CANNOT call ourselves Christian if we hate God, hate our neighbour or hate ourselves.

Some people argue that Western society has already gone too far in the direction of self-love. They maintain that the lengths some people go to achieve a sculptured body, the use of steroids, the growing frequency of eating disorders, the adoration of sportsmen and women, the cult of the gym and of the sex industry all point to a culture too much in love with itself. Some argue what we need is a good dose of self-control. They are only half-right.

The problem with the term ‘love of self’ is that we often hear in it an encouragement to ‘adore self’. Nothing could be further from what Jesus is saying. We are called to love our body, not worship it. Jesus is not calling us to a narcissistic love, like we see in the sex industry and the gym cults, where the only thing we love is ourself. If we have no sense of our own self worth, our own dignity and the personal love of God for each of us, it is impossible for us to give the same to others and to claim from others the dignity we deserve. We will either treat others as our inferiors on the one hand, or allow others to walk all over us, on the other.

Love of self is not about canonising a loss of self-control. Jesus shows us by the way he loved his Father, us and himself that true love always involves sacrifice. If we love our self in the right way, we have the self control to forgo those things that are most destructive in our life and we have the generosity to do for others the things that will enrich their lives. Jesus knew, that we can never love others if we hate ourselves.

Let’s pray in this Eucharist, then, that we will develop our mind, heart, soul and strength to love the One who has created us in love and love those given into our care with the same love we lavish on ourselves. The Gospel of Jesus Christ demands nothing less!

(Richard Leonard)