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 neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

— Matthew 22:37–40

Either before you arrive or as you wait for class to begin, find this short passage from Sacred Scripture in your Bible or through an online search. Reading it will prepare you for this week’s material.

— Matthew 25:31–45

Direct, O Lord, we pray, the hearts of your faithful, and in your kindness grant your servants this grace: that, abiding in the love of you and their neighbor, they may fulfill the whole of your commands. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

As you watch the video lesson, refer to these key highlights. Feel free to use the space provided to take notes.

• It is traditional to speak of an “order of charity” by which we arrange what we love. God comes first in this order.

• After loving God, and after the good of our souls, we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.

• The corporal and spiritual works of mercy are aspects of the love of neighbor.

• God commands us to respect human life from conception to natural death.

• At the end of life, an act of direct killing (euthanasia) is very different from withdrawing extraordinary treatment.

Wisdom of the Saints

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.

— St. Francis de Sales

Take a moment to go through these questions with the group. For larger classes, divide them up into partners. Answers are provided to assist you in leading discussion.

1. What is the order of charity?

   1. Love of God above all things.
   2. Love of the spiritual good of your soul (your friendship with God).
   3. Love of neighbor:
      • Parents, spouses, children, family;
      • Friends, those with a close relationship;
      • Those you have some connection with (coworkers, neighbors on your street);
      • Anyone you might meet;
      • Be ready to do good even to people very far away if the occasion arises.
   4. Love of the good of your own body (your health, pleasure, food, drink, clothing, etc.).

2. Why are the spiritual works of mercy “higher” than the corporal works of mercy?

Because the spiritual works of mercy aim at the spiritual good of your neighbor, which is a higher and nobler good for a human life. Providing for the bodily needs of your neighbor is very important—of course we cannot survive without food, shelter, and clothing—but these are not the crowning goods for our life. Knowing the truth, experiencing friendship and love (and especially the supernatural love of God), and being forgiven and at peace with God—these are much higher goods.

In short, the spiritual works are more important than the corporal works because the soul is of more value than the body and our supernatural destiny is far more important than our physical concerns.
3. Why is it important to stress that human beings have dignity, and their lives are valuable, because of what they are instead of what they do?

If “what we do” becomes the measure of the value and dignity of a person’s life, then we’ve lost sight of the dignity that each person has as willed and created by God.

The Catholic tradition stresses that our dignity comes from the kind of beings that we are: beings made by God and in the image of God. Consequently, every person is valuable regardless of health, disability, age, or mental capacity.

1. What are the important elements of the Church’s teaching on providing care and treatment at the end of life?

A direct or intentional act of killing is different from withdrawing treatment that no longer has a realistic likelihood of success, even if one foresees that the patient will die from the underlying disease if the treatment is withdrawn.

One must always provide care for the sick and the dying: providing food and water, caring for their needs, giving them appropriate medication, and so forth. One may not stop feeding someone, or withdraw hydration (like removing an IV line), in order that death would come. It is not always necessary to continue treatment of an illness, especially when there is a diminished chance of success, or when doing so would cause further suffering, or when death is inevitable or near.

Catechism Connection

“If I . . . have not charity,” says the Apostle, “I am nothing.” Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, “if I . . . have not charity, I gain nothing.” Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: “So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity.”

— CCC 1826

Discuss these questions with the group, pair them with a partner, or ask them to meditate on their own.

1. Has your experience of the love and mercy of God helped you be more loving and merciful to others? How so?

2. How can you take some realistic and concrete first steps toward acts of love of neighbor (for example, either corporal or spiritual works of mercy)?

3. What are some concrete ways that you might help advance a culture of life?

After concluding your group discussion, return to watch the second video where converts to the Catholic faith discuss their conversion and how they live today as Catholics.

Rome to Home

Every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom 2:14–15) the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.

— Pope St. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, no. 2

In Vitro Fertilization: A method of bringing about a new human life by technicians fertilizing an egg taken from a woman with a sperm from a man. This is gravely wrong, both because it intends the conception of life outside the marital embrace of two loving parents, but also because it almost always involves the intentional production of many more embryos than will survive. Many are then discarded or frozen indefinitely; effectively, this is like an early-term abortion.

Abortion: The direct and intentional termination of a pregnancy by killing the unborn child. Such direct abortion, willed either as an end or as a means to some other end, is gravely contrary to the moral law. To highlight the gravity and irreparable harm of abortion, the Church attaches an automatic penalty of excommunication to anyone who procures an abortion.

Euthanasia: An action or an omission which, of itself or by intention, causes the death of disabled, distressed, sick, or dying persons, sometimes with an attempt to justify the act as a means of eliminating suffering. Euthanasia violates the Fifth Commandment of the law of God.

Order of Charity: The traditional teaching about the order in which one should prioritize one’s loves: (1) love of God; (2) love of the good of your soul; (3) love of Neighbor; (4) love of the good of your body.

Works of Mercy: Charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbors in their bodily and spiritual needs. These works are traditionally divided into seven corporal works of mercy and seven spiritual works of mercy.

God’s Word

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another. . . . Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.

— Galatians 5:14–15, 26

Leader: Our Help is in the name of the Lord.
Response: Who made heaven and earth.

All make the sign of the cross.

This serves as a review of the material that your students can read after each class, but it may be helpful for you to read as well. Consider reading it before each class to better prepare you for group discussion.

In the previous chapter, we looked at the virtue of charity, or love, by which we love God above all things. By this same virtue, we love our neighbors. Love is not a duty imposed on us as a kind of burden but how we live out our life in the Holy Spirit, who pours this love into our hearts. He makes us like Christ, who was willing to lay down his life on the Cross for sinners. When we receive this divine love, then, we too are empowered to love our neighbor like Jesus loves him.

Does this mean that you have to love everyone? The answer is yes, but perhaps not quite in the way you might think. There is a traditional Catholic…teaching about the order of charity. It helps prioritize how we concretely go about loving others.

In the first place, we love God for his own sake and above everything else with our whole heart and mind and soul.

In the second place, we love the good of our own souls; that is, after loving God above all things, we aim at being in friendship with him. This might sound selfish, but it isn’t. Being friends with God is the foundation for doing good for your neighbor. Unless we love ourselves enough to want friendship with God, we’ll never really be able to love others. After all, Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself, not more than yourself.

This is why you must never commit a sin for the sake of helping another person. It is always a mistake to think that by forsaking God, you could help another person. As Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

Third, you love your neighbor. And only after this, then, in fourth place, you love the good of your own body (for example, your own bodily health, pleasure, your food and drink and clothing, etc.).

Think of the Fourth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother.” We owe a special love to them. In fact, you can never adequately repay them for the gift of your very existence, not to mention all the other things they have done for you. This means obeying parents and listening to their counsel, honoring them, and supporting them, especially as they begin to age and need your help.

Next comes love of our other relatives (husbands and wives, children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters, etc.). Then after our family, we love those who are close to us, those bound by some special tie or actual relationship. Finally, we love others we might meet throughout the course of our lives in happenstance moments.

What about loving people on the other side of the globe? St. Thomas Aquinas says that we have to be ready to love them if the occasion arises. But we love first, and more intensely, those who are close to us.

What if you just don’t like someone? Actually, that’s a typical experience—you probably won’t feel the same kind of friendliness for everyone, and that’s okay. What’s important is that you love your neighbor even when you don’t like him. It’s not about your feelings but about your choices. Choose to will his good.

This should translate into concrete actions; that is, acts of the love of neighbor. The corporal works of mercy deal with the needs of our neighbor’s bodily life. Obviously, these are baseline needs. And yet these are not the crowning goods of a human life but only its basic foundation. Therefore, there is another classic set of works of mercy, called the spiritual works of mercy, that aim at giving to our neighbor the much more valuable and higher spiritual goods that give life to the soul.

The seven corporal works of mercy are:

1. To feed the hungry.
2. To give drink to the thirsty.
3. To clothe the naked.
4. To visit the imprisoned.
   …
5. To shelter the homeless.
6. To visit the sick.
7. To bury the dead.

The seven spiritual works of mercy are:

1. To admonish the sinner.
2. To instruct the ignorant.
3. To counsel the doubtful.
4. To comfort the sorrowful.
5. To bear wrongs patiently.
6. To forgive all injuries.
7. To pray for the living and the dead.

We should also speak briefly about sins against our neighbors. Here, a great deal could be said, but much will be treated in later chapters. Let’s simply consider the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” The fundamental point here is obvious: it is always and everywhere wrong directly to kill an innocent person. Where the average person is most likely to encounter this issue is at the beginning and end of life.

At the beginning of life, it is uncontroversial, even among biologists, that human life begins at conception. At that point, a new organism with its own distinct lifespan and developmental trajectory exists. You have a new individual of the human species, and every such individual is a human person.

It is always gravely wrong to kill, by a direct act such as abortion or taking a abortifacient drugs (or even a morning-after pill), the new life conceived in the mother’s womb. It’s also gravely wrong to do anything that will cause her body to reject the implantation of that new human life.

At this point, we must highlight God’s mercy. Abortion has touched many lives and God always offers his mercy to such people. You may know someone like that, or perhaps abortion has touched your own life. God’s power of forgiveness is infinite, and he desires to forgive! In addition to this all-important forgiveness, other help is available. If you or someone you know has invisible scars from a past abortion, please reach out to your priest or a trusted friend for help.
Yet we also must acknowledge the truth of what abortion is: the direct killing of an innocent human life. Every human being has dignity as created in the image of God and is loved by God and willed by him to exist. This is also why in vitro fertilization (and other fertility treatments not approved by the Catechism or ethicists who follow Church teaching) are morally wrong. They often involve the intentional creation of new human lives outside of the marital embrace of two loving parents, and very often they result in the death or indefinite freezing of these new children. For example, these methods almost always create multiple embryos. Often, only some of them are implanted in the woman’s womb—the rest are frozen while waiting to see if the first implantation works. If it does, they may be discarded as no longer needed. Additionally, some of the embryos do not successfully implant in the uterus, and so they die. And sometimes, “too many” survive the risky implantation process, and so a woman will be counseled to abort the “surplus” babies so that she will not bear triplets or twins, etc. Another morally problematic issue related to these artificial fertilization methods is the practice of trying to create a child with certain hereditary characteristics in mind. It is not uncommon for parents to request a specific gender. Sperm donation is another type of grave offense against the integrity of life, of marriage, and of the family. In all this, it is not difficult to see the dystopian nature of this practice: when we begin to create the next generation through scientific efforts rather than conceiving them in cooperation with God.

We should also speak about disabilities, illnesses, and the end of life. The key point here is that all human life has an intrinsic value that comes from God. Every human being is created in the image of God and is willed by God. It makes no difference if a person is unable to do certain things, or even if the person is persistently unconscious or in a state of unawareness (a ‘persistent vegetative state’). Our dignity does not come from what we do but from what we are. Every person is valuable regardless of condition, disability, age, or health.

Love of neighbor teaches us that the sick and the elderly deserve our special care. And the medical profession exists to heal us from the illnesses we suffer, not to kill the patients who suffer the illnesses.
As long as a human being is alive—as long as the soul is animating the body, as long as the heart is beating—there is a human person present, with an intrinsic dignity. And no innocent person can ever be directly or intentionally killed.

At this point, we should add an important distinction. A direct or intentional act of killing is different from withdrawing treatment that no longer has a realistic likelihood of success or cure, even if one foresees that the patient will die from the underlying disease when the treatment is withdrawn. Letting the disease run its course is not the same as killing the patient directly.

Of course, one must always continue to provide care for the sick and the dying. That means giving them food and water, caring for their needs, giving them appropriate medication that alleviates their symptoms and sufferings, making them comfortable; in short, treating them like persons who have dignity. One may not stop feeding someone, or withdraw hydration, in order that death would come. At the same time, it is not always necessary to continue treatment of an illness, especially when there is a diminished chance of success, or when doing so would cause further suffering, or when death is inevitable or near. No one facing a grave illness or disease is obliged to use extraordinary means to preserve or extend life (like a painful, burdensome, or risky treatment).

There are many difficult questions here, and we can’t go into them all. You should not hesitate to discuss this with your priest. But the guiding principle is that one must respect the great gift of life, a gift of God, at every stage.

Finally, if a family member is in danger of death, don’t forget to call a priest! The Lord gives us wonderful aids at the end of life, especially in the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and, where possible, confession and Viaticum (a final Communion before death). Every Catholic should benefit from them. Don’t wait until it is too late!

Pope St. John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995).