Daily Meditation: Saturday, January 28, 2012

‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ - but how do humans love themselves?

01/28/2012

You all know the commandment Jesus gave: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. Even if this is considered hard to put into practice, it is generally thought easy to understand. But I ask you this: how do people love themselves? They overindulge in all kinds of ways, abuse their stomach, their lungs, their heart, their brain… If you were to ask all these organs what they think of human love, they would tell you of their suffering and their discontent. Human beings too often forget that their physical body represents a whole population, millions of cells with well-defined functions: there are soldiers, doctors, cabinet ministers, architects, bishops, chemists among them, just as in society. And human beings, who rule over all these populations, don’t give them much thought. And so their cells complain endlessly about how unfair, ignorant and lazy their monarch is, who feeds them badly and leaves them without light, warmth and fresh air. So, how much love can humans have for others when they are so bad at loving themselves?