Pope Leo XIV at Angelus: 'You cannot love on command'
Illustration: Press Pass USA“We cannot truly love God unless this love overflows into love for our brothers and sisters,” Pope Leo XIV said during his Sunday Angelus on October 25 in St. Peter's Square, reflecting on the Gospel's greatest commandment.
The day's Gospel, from Matthew 22:34–40, has a teacher of the Law ask Jesus which commandment is the greatest. Jesus answers with Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
It is not enough simply to acknowledge that God exists, the Pope said — “the Lord seeks a personal relationship with us: the one true God wants to become our God.” Love for God, he added, is neither an obligation nor an imposition, since “one cannot love ‘on command.’”
To the first commandment Jesus adds a second — “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” — which springs from the same source, the Pope said. Through a close relationship with God, he said, selfishness is overcome and “even love for oneself becomes charity: our existence turns toward the other and becomes a gift for those around us.”
Closing his reflection, the Pope recalled St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who wrote that love alone makes the Church's members act — without it, he warned, “our faith would be deprived of its essence, our good works would be reduced to mere moralism, and our hope would be in vain.”
Sources: Vatican News, via LiCAS.news (Oct 25, 2026); The Catholic Sun, full text of the Angelus address (Oct 25, 2026).
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