A devoted father once said, "My children come third in my life." He went on to explain: "God comes first, my wife comes second and my children come third." Once his listeners overcame their initial shock, they realized the good point he was making: our various loves must be properly ordered.

Although we use the one word "love" to describe the devotion and affection we have for different people, we cannot in fact love them all in the same manner or to the same degree. There is a hierarchy among loves.

Our Lord expresses the same truth: Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. His words seem harsh, but their meaning is quite simple. We must always subject our human loves — for parents, spouses, children, siblings and friends — to divine love — our love for God. This hierarchy of loves proceeds from the greatest and first commandment: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (Mt 22:37). God alone is entirely worthy and deserving of all our love. When we place someone above Him, we violate this most basic commandment.

This hierarchy also preserves the goodness of human loves. In their proper place, these loves are good and noble. The Lord commands us: love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39). But if we exalt human loves above divine love, we make them into gods — and perhaps realize too late that they have become demons, and not loves at all.

The love among friends, for example, quickly becomes disordered, counterfeit love when "peer pressure" or the desire for popularity leads us to betray God and His commandments. When parents love their children more than God, they do a disservice to those same children. That disordered love can lead the parents to please their children to the neglect of discipline, instruction, and formation of character. So also the love of spouses, meant to be a reflection of divine love, instead becomes an occasion of sin when the desire to please the other leads to such immoral actions as sterilization or the use of contraception.

In this way disordered love leads to sin. We rarely sin out of hatred. Very few commit an evil act with the thought, "I choose to do this because I hate." Rather, we sin because we do not love in the proper manner; because we love others more than God; because we love to please our parents or to have the praise of friends and relatives more than we love God. At those times, we are not worthy of Him.

The reverse is also true: ordered love leads to virtue. The way to perfect our human loves is to love God above all else. Divine love does not destroy or eliminate human loves. It strengthens and elevates them, for the ultimate purpose of all loves is to love others as God loves them.