In his famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey relates his confrontation with a man who has fallen out of love with his wife. The man admits, “The feeling of love just isn’t there.” Stephen says, “My friend, love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love - the verb. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”

Today, the First Reading (Dt 30:10-14) and the Gospel (Lk 10:25-37) tell us that “love is a verb.” They even appear to be parallel in their beginning and end in calling us to love not in words but in deed. The First Reading begins with, “If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God, and keep his commandments and statutes,” and ends with, “You have only to carry it out.” The Gospel begins with, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” and ends with, “Go and do likewise.”

Like the “scholar of the law” in the Gospel, we know that loving God and loving our neighbor is the key to eternal life. Because many of us have the tendency to remain only on the level of knowing, we forget the doing which is the most important. That is why, Christ, whose words “are Spirit and life” and has “the words of everlasting life” (Jn 6: 63, 68), reveals to us in his Parable of the Good Samaritan that it’s not enough to ask the question, “Who is my neighbor?” What is more important is to be a neighbor to anyone who is in need. The point is neighborliness, not neighborhood. Remember, “Love is a verb.” Or, as the Nike slogan puts it: “JUST DO IT.”