Love your neighbour as yourself
Course – Week 5 – Compassion
Loving your neighbour as yourself is the second of the two ‘great commandments’ in the Gospels. It comes straight after the command to love God with all our hearts. But some say it is one of the hardest commandments to keep as we often don’t love ourselves very much. We can try to be conscientious about loving our neighbour but without true love that doesn’t work according to the William Temple quotation below:
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” But love is not at our command. We may force ourselves to act as if we loved, but it can only be with partial success; for where real love is absent there is failure also of the insight of sympathy by which the true welfare of neighbour is discerned. Conscientiousness without love is clumsy.”
(taken from ‘Daily Readings from William Temple’ compiled by Hugh C Warner Mowbray 1981)
Spend some time today reflecting on the love you have for yourself and the love you have for your neighbours. You might like also to use the two images below for further mediation on the theme…..
