Right priority

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he 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 neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22: 34-40)

Unlike the Sadducees, who did not believe in eternal life, the Pharisees not only believed in eternal life, but also thought that after death all of us would be judged by God according to our behaviour. Jesus, when responding to the Pharisees, summarises the commandments by putting them according to the right  priority: the grateful and caring love to be cultivated towards God and then towards one's neighbour, not assuming the right to judge others which is only divine, but to rejoice together with God for their eternal salvation. Do you love God above all other things, or do you think first and foremost of satisfying your own desires?