24 February 2018
Saturday of the First Week of Lent
Jesus continues His lesson from yesterday, telling us that not only must we live the Law from the heart, rather than purely by our actions, but we must go beyond the written Law to live out its full Spirit. Not only, has He told us today, must we love our brother and those closest to us, but we must love even our enemies. If we cannot love our enemies, if we cannot have at least some charity toward those who have hurt or wronged us, then we are not children of our heavenly Father. We see this evidenced upon the Cross, the very emblem of Love, where the Only Begotten Child of the Father begged His Father to forgive those who were putting Him to death. Consider, too, the fact that God the Father did not punish those who put His Son to death, but rather showed mercy on them and the entire world, offering the graces of His Son’s Passion to all who would come to drink at that sacred well!
Our instinct is to love those who love us, but if we love only those who love us, then our love, ultimately, is conditional: our love is earned by our first being convinced that the other person loves us as well. But that is not the love of God: “…God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). If we greet and show kindness only toward those who we care about, what makes us any different from tax collectors and unbelievers? Jesus calls us to love as He loves, which is, in essence, to love first and ask questions later.
Jesus is not ignorant of the fact that such love requires a level of vulnerability that often frightens us into reserving our love for those who have proven themselves worthy of it. But is anyone other than God really worthy of love? Yet Jesus reminds us that God “…makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” No one is worthy of His love, yet He loves all.
Yes, loving your enemies will likely pierce your heart, but Jesus is not asking you to die for them. Likewise He is not asking you to risk the possibility of them wronging you again, or revisiting past trauma. Notice He doesn’t demand reconciliation with our enemies, but only love and prayer. Forgiveness, He teaches us, is an act of the heart, whether or not that is manifested exteriorly in an act of reconciliation. He wants there to be no room in our hearts for hatred, no room at all for grudges; such things are antithetical to the love of God that is meant to dwell within us. If we are, truly, temples of the Holy Spirit by our baptism (1 Corinthians 6:19), a place not only of the Spirit’s dwelling but of His worship, how can we erect effigies of those we hate within the sanctuary of our heart and assume there is also room for the Spirit? How can we divide ourselves between loving some and hating others, when we have but one heart by which to exercise both powers?
“So be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Let your love be perfect; do not love and hate, but only love, as the Father only loves. Love those who love you, love those who hate you: let your heart do what it was created to do, and peace will dwell there.