Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

In today's reading from the Gospel of Matthew, we find one of the most difficult of Jesus' teachings, if not the most difficult one. He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

This is not simply a command to love those we do not already love, or topray for others even if we do not consider them friends or family embers. Rather, this is a command to love and pray for those we would normally hate, those we would normally curse. Elsewhere in the Gospels we find Jesus' disciples question Him about who constitutes our neighbor. We might ask a similar question here about whoare enemies are. This is an important question. If you are a soldier in the midst of war, your enemy might quite literally be members of the opposing army. For most of us, I suspect, our enemies may be much closer to home, and perhaps less vehement. Perhaps our "enemy" is a boss or co-worker at work who has been making life difficult for us. Perhaps it is a family member who seems to purposefully wish or cause us harm. Perhaps it is a neighbor or competitor, or a school bully, or someone who cost us our job.

What I propose we do is take some time today to think about who our own enemies are. Many of us may not have real "enemies," but I'm sure we can all think of individuals who frustrate and annoy us, who we have sometimes not had the most caritable thoughts about, who sometimes create obstacles for us. After we've isolated a few people in our minds, let's think of some way we can live out Jesus' command to love them and pray for them. This does not mean that we have to simply sit back and take it. If our boss is treating us unfairly, we do not have to simply consent to their unfairness, but we do have to love them. Love in the sense Jesus' intends, is not a feeling, but it is active and selfless. This is very difficult. In some instances we may not be ready to love our enemies, in which case, we need to ask God to help us become the kind of people who can grow to love our enemies.

Jeff Morrow