Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

In today's Gospel reading from the Gospel of Matthew we encounter one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, sayings of Jesus: "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44). Loving your enemies is an important part of what it means to be Christian, but it is very difficult.

Jesus acknowledges that His audience has been told before to hate their enemies. For most of us, I think, we could find that much easier to do. Wouldn't it be nice if Jesus said that it was ok to hate our enemies? But He does not. Rather, Jesus says, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." The best examples of enemies are those who are literally at war with one another. What would demonstrate more that people are enemies when they try to kill and torture one another? Most of us reading these posts are probably Americans. Many Americans consider Osama Bin Laden, or the late Saddam Hussein to be/have been enemies. I don't think it's difficult to imagine someone like Adolph Hitler to be an enemy. If these examples don't work for you, think of someone who you could see envisioning as an enemy. And what does Jesus tell us to do to them? Hate and kill your enemies without remorse, bringing the sword of justice to rest where it belongs? No, rather His words are: "love your enemies." In the parallel passage from Luke's Gospel, we find the added: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you" (Luke 6:27-28).

These are tough words. Does it mean we need to feel good about our enemies, or think nice happy thoughts about those who have harmed us in some way? No. It means we need to love them. Love is not simply a feeling. Love is an action. Love is selfless, sacrificial. Loving enemies does not mean accepting victimization. It means asking God to help others. It means forgiving. The Christian family who visits the man who murdered their son and offers their forgiveness, who testifies at the court hearing to help the murderer avoid the death penalty (there are many real examples of this), show what this kind of love looks like. Is it easy? No. But the model again is Jesus:

"When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him...Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, they know not what they do'" (Luke 23:33-34). Loving enemies is not passive acceptance of wrongs, but active love, a peaceful Christian form of resistance that is powerful indeed. It is not passively accepting the wrong that has been done to us, but actively cooperating with God in transforming the wrong into a healing love that has the power to transform the transgressor. For, when Jesus speaks of loving enemies, He's not primarily speaking about the Bin Laden's, Hitler's, and others whom most of us will never meet, although if we have hatred directed towards such distant people surely it would include them, but rather Jesus is primarily speaking about those with whom we come in contact.

Perhaps "enemy" may even be too strong a word for most of us. Maybe we have no real "enemies." Jesus is telling us to reconcile with those around us. Let's take some time today to pray about who are the "enemies" in our own lives. Perhaps they are family members, co-workers, or someone else. Let's ask God to help us pray for them. Maybe we can take the extra step and try to think of something good we can do for them. Such good deeds are powerful. Perhaps they have hurt us too much to do anything so radical at this point, in which case, we need to pray to God to help us desire to get to the point where we can pray for them, or perhaps desire to desire to get to that point, etc. Most importantly, let us talk to God about our enemies. God knows how we have been hurt and how we feel, but only in bringing our hurts and pains before God can we begin to experience the loving transformation God wants us to experience, so that we can become more like Jesus, the embodiment of divine love.

Jeff Morrow