How much would you be willing to pay for a guaranteed ticket to heaven? As much as it would cost to travel into outer space?

Believe it or not, there is such a ticket. The price? It is high but attainable for everyone who reads this. It has been in the writings of the Old Testament as far back as the time of Moses and in the sayings of Jesus about the kingdom of heaven.

Listen to this message and see if you agree. The message is so clear and so forthright that it is hard to escape if you take it to heart.

We must love God with all our heart, with our whole soul, and with our mind as well. But there is more. We must love others as we love ourselves. Everything rests on these two laws of the Old Testament, Jesus told his listeners. Obedience to them opens up heaven’s gates. This is an old message but it is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching as well. The only difference is that He offers Himself as the fulfillment of this Old Testament commandment by giving us a new commandment : “love one another as I have loved you.”( John 13: 34 ) By offering Himself as the embodiment of the Old Testament commandment, Jesus personalizes this message for us. If you want to know how to love God and one another, just ask yourself this simple question: what would Jesus do?

Our lives are phony if we are not united and connected with one another. Lacking love of neighbor, our love of God is make-believe. Loving God is loving neighbor and loving neighbor is loving God.

The Gospel calls on us to practice this dual love ( God and neighbor ) by seeking justice and peace for the “least” of our brethren ( Matthew 25: 40 ): those trapped in poverty, those in abused and abusing relationships, the unemployed, the victims of terrorism and war, those suffering from prejudice because of race, age, sex, or creed. All of these people are our neighbors.

Read the parable of the Good Samaritan if you want to appreciate who is your neighbor ( Luke 10 : 25 -37 ).

Talking about love is not enough. It does not exist in the abstract, but in the concrete, in how we treat on another. The gospel calls for an active love, a love that is up and going, a love that participates in the full life of the community: the family, the neighborhood, the city, the nation, and the world .

As imitators of Jesus, we are called to act lovingly, to develop and nourish empathy for the needs of others, to surrender our comfort zone in order to share in the pain of those who suffer, to come to the aid of all our neighbors, to love one another as Jesus has loved us.

Jesus says His rule of love is not a yoke that is heavy but something gentle to make our burdens light ( The gospel of Matthew 11 : 28 – 29 ).

To live by this rule is the ticket to heaven.

—Fr. Hugh Duffy