Loving Your God and Your Neighbor through the Psalms

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:37-40

Before we get to the Gospel of Luke in November, we are going to study the Psalms for four weeks starting on October 19.

Jesus gave his followers two commandments: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. To be truly human, to become more like Jesus, we are to follow these two great commandments. We won’t be perfect at it, but that’s why we practice confession, the act of saying we are sorry and want to start over again. Loving God and loving neighbor are also the marching orders for the Church. They are our active mission.

The Psalms are an excellent example of people being honest with God and are a great resource for learning how to love God and our neighbor. Many of the psalms address problems to God, putting issues into his hands and out of the hearts, minds, and souls of the psalm-writers. They resolve that God can take care of their problems better than they can. This, then, offers them a way forward to love God and their neighbor.

As we read through 20 psalms over a period of four weeks beginning on October 19, I hope these psalms will bring your closer to God, more attuned to his love, and help you have a generous love for him and your neighbor.

Tomorrow, read through Psalm 145 as an introduction to this study, reflecting on its theme of praise and how the psalm makes much of God, putting the psalmist in a loving relationship with God.