“But to live a just and holy life,” St. Augustine writes, is “to love things, that is to say, in the right order.”
Theological tradition calls this the ordo caritatis, the order of charity; and it’s simply the idea that in order to love well one must love the right things and not love the wrong things, and that one must know what should be loved more and what should be loved less, and it what order. It’s the very practical idea that to love well one must love well, and that our loves should be in harmony with each other.
Think of family and social life. I love my children more than I love your children, and that is as it should be. Your children are wonderful and loved by God just as much as mine are. But I love my children more. And that’s good because for my children to grow properly (and to learn love themselves and how to love others properly) they need that parental love which is meant exclusively for them. My children will learn how to love well if I have loved them well; psychologists and good parents know this. But that means that as a parent, I need to know where my love for my children fits with my other loves—my love for my wife, my friends, my hobbies, my job. And, of course, it is a love shown more in action than mere words. For my child to learn love, my loves must be in order, and it must show. I must show up, show affection, and not just say I love my kids while being indifferent, constantly preoccupied, or cruel. That’s the ordo caritatis of the family and society. It’s why families matter, because in the family we learn how to love.
And the ordo caritatis includes God. This is the good Jewish point Jesus makes in this passage from Matthew’s gospel. We are to love God with everything we have, and we are love our neighbor as ourselves, and everything hangs on that (Matthew 22:37-40). This is Jesus’s order of charity. Now what that means is that just as my children learn how to love by experiencing my love, so we learn how to love by experiencing God’s love. Just as my daughter hopefully learns well what the love of a husband and father looks like by watching me, so too do I learn what loving neighbor (even an enemy neighbor) looks like by watching Christ. The loves we see and experience form us to be lovers ourselves. Which is why how we love each other matters; because we form each other—for good or ill—whether we like it or not.
St. Augustine was clear that to love and worship God is the first act of justice. Because when we’re smart enough to give God what is his due, we’ll slowly become smart enough to give others what is due to them. This is why loving God matters. And I mean really loving him, not just in cheap sentimental words (for we know when someone is simply saying they love us but don’t mean it!), but in action—in prayer, in reading scripture, in sacraments, in service. This is what Jesus means saying we must love God with everything we’ve got. Otherwise our other loves won’t be as loving. Which might explain our world these days, as dark and unloving as it now seems to be.
And so, love God with all you have. Love him in actions as well as words. Then you’ll see your loves change for the better. Because your loves will be in order, and you will be just and holy.
