Ruth 1:1, 3-6, 14-16, 22 / Matthew 22:34-40
It is unlikely that a person can come to know God and love God as an isolated individual.
Because it is with others and from others that we come to know what kindness and compassion is, what love and forgiveness is, what truth and beauty is.
And we would want to believe in what they believe in, so that we too can radiate the goodness they radiate.
In the 1st reading, it would certainly be alright for Ruth to return to her people just as it would be alright for Naomi to return to her people.
Yet Ruth chose to follow Naomi and go to a foreign land and be a stranger and a foreigner, although she was not obliged to.
A possible reason for her to do that was because she saw the goodness of her mother-in-law Naomi.
Subsequently she can even accept Naomi's people as well as the God that Naomi believed in.
Certainly in Naomi and Ruth, we see the commandment of love that Jesus talked about in the gospel, being practised in the reality of life.
Yet in the reality of life, the conflicts in relationships abound, be it between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, father and son, husband and wife, parents and children, or superior and subordinates.
Yet the commandment of love demands a commitment and a conviction from us so that others will begin to love just as we choose to love.
Otherwise we will be living a very isolated and lonely life.