"For if You Love Those Who Love You,
What Credit is That to You?"

Today's Mass Readings

The teaching found in today’s Gospel reading is perhaps the most difficult in the entire Bible. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, and to bless those who curse us. Jesus is not telling his followers to feel good about their enemies; love is not merely a feeling. The kind of love Jesus is talking about is the sacrificial love where one wishes their enemies well and goes out of their way to help their enemies, even sacrificing for them. This teaching, like St. Paul’s from Colossians 1:24 from earlier this week on suffering, can be very difficult to live out, indeed impossible without God’s Spirit. They can also be taken in dangerous and unhealthy ways, especially for those who have been victimized in some way. No matter what someone has done to you, even to the point of killing and torture, the ideal standard that God lays down is love and forgiveness. That’s what Jesus did. God holds out the opportunity for forgiveness even to those who tortured His Son to death. That is the model we are given. Is this easy? No. Is it even possible? Not on human strength alone. Keep in mind, such love does not mean condoning the evils an enemy has committed. Such love does not mean ignoring the evils committed. In many cases, we cannot change or even mend the evils committed, and we certainly cannot change the events that took place in the past. We can, however, with the grace of God working in our lives through the Sacraments, and also through the support of others in our lives, have an effect on how the past shapes our lives for the future.

The love of which Jesus speaks is transformative love. It is more powerful than any weapon. It is how Jesus saved the world. Jesus’ teaching has implications for how we view others in the world. We must love our enemies. We must love the Hitlers and Bin Ladens of the world. This does not mean we must feel good about them nor try to help them in their evil causes. Nor does this mean we should simply accept the evil they may cause. It does mean we need to pray for their souls. It does mean we need to wish them well. Christians following Jesus’ message will not seek to kill the enemy out of vengeance, hatred, or anger. Christians following Jesus’ message would die themselves in the attempt to save the enemy, as Jesus Himself died to save His enemies. We can recall Jesus’ prayer at the end of His life for His enemies, “Father forgive them, for they known not what they do.”

So how do we put Jesus’ words into practice? By taking small steps. By forgiving those around us for the small things and showing love to them in small ways. Maybe we have “enemies” at school or at work or at home. We need to learn how to inconvenience ourselves to show them love. Perhaps we are not even at that stage yet. Then we need to pray that God would help us get to that stage to show them love. Perhaps we are not yet even at that stage. Then we need to pray to God to help us get to that stage where we can pray that we would want to help our enemies. Whatever stage we are at, we can do something, even as simple as a prayer for the desire to learn to help and love our enemies. Maybe we can start with the enemies it is easiest to love, those we don’t often come into contact with, and then move to the enemies we find it most difficult to love.

This is difficult work, not least of all because we don’t want to confuse things and make it appear that we are condoning the actions of our enemies if we in fact are not----and Jesus never calls us to do that. We must learn to let go of grudges and hatred. Grudges and hatred do no one any good. They kill us from the inside out. We need to learn to move beyond feelings, and to especially love others sacrificially for whom we have only negative feelings. Often loving others, especially if they have done us wrong, will involve our prayer for their conversion. More often than that, however, it will involve prayer for our own conversion. Our own conversion to God, which we all almost always need at some level, is the first step in loving our enemies.