The first, most fundamental commandment Jesus articulates is the command that we love God "with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength." Loving our neighbor is vitally-important, of course, but it comes second to the requirement of loving God. But God can seem so distant, so wholly other, so beyond out comprehension that God is difficult to love. Our neighbor is like us, and so we can relate, can love, more easily. Today's Gospel (Lk 7: 36-50) gives us a possible explanation for our inability to love God as deeply as we should, along with a way out of that inability. The story is familiar to us. Jesus dines at the home of a Pharisee and a woman in town with a bad reputation shows up, apparently not invited, and displays immense love for Jesus-- bathing His feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, annointing them with oil, kissing them. The reason she does that, Jesus tell us, is that she has had her sins, which are many, forgiven, and for that reason has shown great love. The more sins we have which are forgiven, the more we love. Or, put the other way, as Jesus says, "the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." So one way to ramp up our love for God is to spend a bit of time focusing on the fact that, whatever we do and however often we have done it, God forgives our sins if we seek God's forgiveness. The more we appreciate the immense nature of God's forgiveness, the more we are drawn towards God in love. What stands in the way? One of two things: either we don't seek God's forgiveness (so we don't experience it, and don't react in joy and love) or we are forgiven little because we don't think we need any more than a little forgiveness-- we fail to appreciate our sinfullness fully. I don't mean to suggest that we walk around in sackcloth and ashes, carrying a huge burden of guilt. But in an "I'm ok/you're ok" world, where the very idea of sin is called into question, we can find ourselves feeling like we don't have much that needs to be forgiven. People at the highest level of government can even say that they have never done anything for which they need to ask God for forgiveness. If we don't recognize our sins, we won't seek forgiveness. And if we don't seek forgiveness, we won't be forgiven, and we'll be the people "to whom little is forgiven," thus loving little. The more we appreciate the depth of our need for forgiveness, and the unlimited willingness of God to forgive, the more we are like the woman of bad reputation in today's Gospel-- being forgiven much and loving much.