15 June 2021

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

God asks us to practice an extraordinary kind of love, one that extends to enemies and persecutors as well as friends and relatives. Why does Jesus ask us to show a love that is so difficult? Not to watch us fail—though we often do—but so that we might become like God himself. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, the Father “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Matt 5:45). God loved us first (1 John 4:19), and he gave himself up for us while we were still sinners who did not return his love (cf. Rom 5:8).

In Jesus’ call to love our enemies, then, we can begin to understand his challenge to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). It is the perfection of a merciful love which goes beyond the demands of a narrow justice and gives what is not owed. Each day, we can recommit ourselves, with God’s grace, to living this perfect love.