Pope Leo’s Angelus Reflection for 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St Peter’s Square – Sunday, 25 October 2026
___________________________________
Gospel Reading: (Matthew 22:34-40)
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees they got together and, to disconcert him, one of them put a question, ‘Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’ Jesus said, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.’
Pope Leo’s Angelus Reflection
Dear brothers and sisters,
In today’s Gospel, the Lord leads us once again to the heart of our faith.
A teacher of the Law, seeking to test Jesus, asks him,
“Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”.
Jesus responds by quoting a passage from Deuteronomy: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Deuteronomy 6:5).
Christ places love at the very center of our relationship with God.
It is not enough to merely acknowledge God’s existence, his uniqueness, or his omnipotence.
The Lord seeks a personal relationship with us.
The one true God wants to be our God.
In our encounter with him, the commandment of love is neither an obligation nor an imposition.
One cannot love “on command.”
Love for God is the very essence of human desire, fulfilled in communion with him.
For this reason, our love can be authentic only when it is a response to his love, which always comes first.
This gives rise to the need for total commitment involving the whole person: heart, soul, and mind.
Along with the first commandment, the Lord gives a second: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).
This rule of life springs from the same source, which is why Jesus says it is similar to the first.
Thanks to our close relationship with God, we can look at ourselves and our neighbors through the eyes of Christ.
In this way, selfishness is overcome, and love for oneself becomes charity. Our existence turns toward others and becomes a gift to those around us.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus understood this well.
She wrote, ““Love alone makes the Church’s members act.
If Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would refuse to shed their blood”.
I understood that Love Comprised All Vocations, That Love Was Everything…
Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love… my vocation, at last I have found it… My Vocation Is Love!” ” (St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus’ – The Story of a Soul).
Without love, our faith would be deprived of its essence.
Our good works would be reduced to mere moralism, and our hope would be in vain.
Dear friends,
We cannot truly love God unless this love extends to our brothers and sisters.
Likewise, we cannot truly love our neighbor except as children of the same Father who first loved us in his Son, Jesus.
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to have a new heart capable of embracing and living out the greatest of all commandments.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose Immaculate Heart is filled with love, intercede for us.