Mateus 22
Bernard of Clairvaux
Mateus 22:37
But affectual charity is not so: for it draws its order from the first things. For it is wisdom, through which certainly each thing savors as it is: so that, for example, what is of greater value by nature, the affection itself also feels to be of greater value; lesser things less, the least things least. And that order of charity truth makes; but this order the charity of truth claims for itself. For charity is true in this also, that those who are in greater need receive first: and in turn in this truth appears dear, if we hold in affection the order which truth holds by reason. If therefore you love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength (Mt 22:37); and leaping beyond that love of love, with which actual charity is content, by a more fervent affection, you receive at close range the divine love itself, toward which that is a step, having received the Spirit in fullness, and wholly catch fire: God surely savors to you, even if not altogether worthily as he is (which indeed is impossible for every creature), yet certainly as your capacity for savoring is. Then you will also savor to yourself as you are, when you perceive that you have absolutely nothing for which you may love yourself except insofar as you are God's: since you have poured out the whole of that for which you love, into him. You will savor, I say, to yourself as you are, when by the very experience of your love, and the affection which you will have toward yourself, you find that you are worthy of nothing that might be loved by you yourself, except on account of him, without whom you yourself are nothing. — Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 50
Mateus 22:39
So it is necessary that you also receive in this way the command that you love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39), even if it is not so openly expressed. Or do you not finally judge it sufficient for fulfilling this commandment concerning love of neighbor, if you perfectly observe that which is rightly prescribed to every man by the law of nature: "What you do not wish done to you, do not do to another"? (Tob 4:16.) And likewise: "Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do also to them" (Mt 7:12). — Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 50