Daily Reflections - January 13th, 2026

January 13^th - Usually what I do is look up what day it is on Wikipedia and it’ll tell me whose feast day it is. But today I didn’t feel the spirit calling me towards any of the saints listed. Obviously nothing against them, I just didn’t feel inspired by them. Instead I’ll talk about something else. In Mark 12, Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are to love God, and love your neighbor. Both of these are plucked directly from Jewish scripture (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and Leviticus 19:18). These two form the basis of Christian practice in my opinion. The whole of Christian virtue hangs on these two. But I want to bring up something, who is our neighbor? It’s easy to love the people who are nice to you, and it’s also easy to hate the people who hate you. In doing that, it becomes something humans can manipulate to their own ends. And to stop this from happening, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan when asked “Who is my neighbor?” in Luke 10. To put it simply, a Jewish man is ambushed while riding from Jerusalem to Jericho, the bandits leave him for dead. Two fellow Jews walk by and do not help him. But then a Samaritan (A religion similar but distinct to Judaism) stops and helps the man. Jesus asks, which one of those three is the fallen man’s neighbor? It is the one who showed mercy on him. He then tells the person the story is addressed to “Go and do likewise”. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. But in this story, Jesus shows us that our worst enemy is our neighbor. Everyone is our neighbor. May we all, Christian or not, come to realize that fact, and do likewise.

Prayer: Help us to see, O Lord, our neighbor in everyone we meet. May we strive to transform the world into one great neighborhood, where we all look out for each other. Amen.

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” - Matthew 22:35-40