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It is commonplace, both among those who love Catholicism and those who detract from it, to think of our faith as containing myriad rules and requirements.

For some, this multitude of rules guides a humble examination of conscience aimed at perfection and growth in holiness, while for others, it represents a reason to mistrust Catholic Christianity as ordered toward binding up a humanity meant for freedom and choice. Christ in the Gospel today answers both worldviews, reminding conscientious Catholics of what lies at the heart of their striving for perfection in everything, and reminding those opposed to what seems like a restrictive church that the faith is simple in its core, or that all its requirements of belief and morality have a common root.

In this passage, Christ has already silenced the Sadducees, the sect that denied the resurrection, and indeed, all spiritual reality. They had tried to catch him in a trap with a question about marriage. Christ responded by directing their minds to the supernatural reality of heaven and the resurrected life, where marriage will have passed away, and people will be joined in friendship and love to God himself.

Now the Pharisees come forward to trick Christ in turn. They acknowledge supernatural realities but are caught up in the meticulous keeping of the many commandments as well as the multitude of traditions that had grown up around the commandments as part of their heritage. Again, Christ cuts through earthly logic, and teaches the simple truth of heaven. The one commandment is that of love, first for God, and then for neighbor. Earthly ways of thinking are complex and tangled; heavenly truth is clear and simple.

Christ speaks not only to the Sadducees and Pharisees, of course, but also to us. He reminds us as much as them that the heart of our whole life in him is to hold fast to God in love, and to hold on to our neighbor with that same love.

A clear sense of the unity in our faith, founded on loving union with God — a union into which God first invites us — can free us from the lethargy, frustration and discouragement that sometimes accompany our Catholic life. Yes, we do have many teachings, and our church requires much that our culture does not, but only because we have been invited by God’s love to an all-consuming and all-satisfying love in return. We may have much to say on how we and our neighbors ought to live our lives, but only because, out of a love for ourselves and our neighbors, we strive to bring all into a right relationship with the God who alone gives lasting joy.

St. Augustine once said, “love, and do what you will.” While this could be misinterpreted as permission to act with total license so long as we have general good feelings for others in our lives, we should take it to mean that if we are loving God back above all things — which means loving him as he asks to be loved, and therefore loving our neighbors for God’s sake and as he commands us to love them — then the multitude of teachings our faith gives us will not be a source of exhaustion or confusion, but rather a broad and beautiful refraction of the pure light at the center of the Gospel. Loving God back is the heart of our whole religion, and this reminder today can allow us all to love our Catholic faith with the lighthearted and ardent joy that makes all virtue easier and represents the foretaste of heaven’s eternal happiness.