"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" was an ancient commandment, written in the law of Moses (Leviticus 19:18) and Jesus himself quotes it as such (Luke 10:27) How than does Jesus call it "his" commandment and the "new" commandment? The answer is that, with him, the object, the subject and the reason for loving one's neighbor have all changed.
First of all the object has changed. In other words: who is the neighbor who must be loved? It is no longer only one's fellow countrymen, or at most the guest who dwells among the people, but every person, including the foreigner (the Samaritan!), even one's enemy. It is true that the second part of the phrase "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy" (Mt 5:43) is not found literally in the Old Testament, but it does sum up the general approach expressed in the law of retaliation: "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Leviticus 24:20), especially if we compare it with what Jesus expects from his disciples:
"But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain on the upright and the wicked alike. For if you love those who love you, what reward can you expect? Do not even the tax collectors do as much? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Do not even the gentiles do as much?" - Matthew 5:44-47
The subject of the love of neighbor has also changed: the word neighbor now means something else. It is not another person; it is I, it is not the person who is next to me, but the one who comes close. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus shows that there is no need to wait passively for my neighbor to turn up on my path, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. There is no such thing as a ready-made neighbor; there is a neighbor when you decide to come close to that person.
And most of all, the model or measure of the love of neighbor has changed. Until Jesus came, the model was love of self: "as yourself." It has been said that God could not have chosen a more secure peg than this on which to fasten the love of neighbor. He would not have achieved the same result even if he had said: "You shall love your neighbor as you love your God!" because, when it comes to loving God, and understanding what it means to love God, a man can still cheat -- but not where love of self is concerned. We know full well what it means to love ourselves, whatever the circumstances. It is a mirror that is always before us, there is no escape.
And yet there is still an escape, which is why Jesus replaces it with another model and another measure. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). A person can love himself or herself in the wrong way, can desire evil, not good, can love vice, not virtue. If such a person loves others "as himself" and wants others to have the things he wants for himself, pity the person who is loved in that way! We know, instead, where the love of Jesus leads us: to virtue, to the good, to the Father. Whoever follows him "does not walk in darkness." He has loved us by giving his life for us, while we were still sinners, in other words, enemies (Romans 5:6 ff).
We can now understand what the evangelist John means by his apparently contradictory statement: "My dear friends, this is not a new commandment I am writing to you, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the message which you have heard. Yet in another way I am writing a new commandment for you" (1 John 2:7-8). The commandment of the love of neighbor is "old" in the letter, but "new" with the novelty of the Gospel itself -- because it is no longer just a "law" but also and first of all a "grace." It is founded on communion with Christ, made possible by the gift of the Spirit.
With Jesus there is a move from a two-person relationship: "What the other person does to you, do the same to him," to a three-person relationship: "What God has done to you, do the same to the other person," or, starting from the opposite direction: "What you have done to others is what God will do to you." There are countless sayings of Jesus and the Apostles which repeat this concept: “As God has forgiven you, so you are to forgive one another": "If you do not forgive your enemies from the heart, neither will your Father forgive you." Our excuse is cut off at the root: “But he does not love me, he offends me." That's his business, not yours. The only thing that concerns you is what you do to others and how you behave in face of what others do to you.
But the main question still remains to be answered: why this singular diversion of love from God to one's neighbor? Wouldn't it be more logical to expect: "As I have loved you, so you must love me," rather than: "As I have loved you, so must you love one another"? Here is the difference between love that is purely eros and love which is eros and agape together. Purely erotic love is a closed circle: "Love me, Alfredo, love me as much as I love you": thus sings Violetta in Verdi's Traviata: I love you, you love me. The love of agape is an open circle: it comes from God and returns to Him, but passes through one’s neighbor. Jesus himself inaugurated this new kind of love: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you" (John 15:9).
St. Catherine of Siena gave the simplest and most convincing explanation of the reason for this. She puts these words into God's mouth:
"I ask you to love me with the same love with which I love you. But this you cannot do for me, because I have loved you without being loved. All the love you have for me is a love of debt, not of grace, in as much as you are obliged to do it, while I love you with the love of grace, not of debt. Hence, you cannot give me the love that I require. Because of this I have placed your neighbor alongside you: so that you may do to him what you cannot do for me, that is, love him without considering whether he deserves it, and without expecting anything in return. And I consider as done to me what you did to him."
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