Answer: I don’t think you have missed out on something very
basic to our faith. Instead, I think we are dealing with a
simple issue of terminology. Self-gift, or self-giving, is
basically a synonym for Christlike love, also known as Christian
charity. This is how Jesus defined it during the Last Supper.
After he gave us the new commandment to love one another as he
has loved us, he explained pretty clearly what he meant by the
word love: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s
life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Self-giving is another way
to say “laying down one’s life” for another. And so, when Jesus
taught that the whole Law can be summarized in the double
commandment of loving God and loving our neighbor, this is what
he was referring to: giving of ourselves, and thereby giving
ourselves, to God and to others. All the other virtues, all the
other commandments, are just variations on this theme; they are
all connected to self-giving, either by helping us achieve a
level of spiritual maturity