Today we are given the opportunity to meditate on the golden rules of the kingdom of God.
Each sentence in this gospel is rich and need to be meditated.
I would like to meditate only on the first sentence, “Love your enemies”.
What does it mean? How can we love someone who hurts us? If this is the golden rule of Jesus, is it necessary to be a Christian? Everyone might have thought of this at least once in their life.
The first thing to understand is that our comprehension of
love is different from the word used by Jesus. The word “love”, in our
comprehension, is wrapped up with our emotions, passions, and feelings toward
another person. So, when we say we love someone, we mean that we have “good
feelings” towards someone. It isn’t just that we want good things for that
person, but that person makes us happy too, makes us feel good about ourselves.
We delight in their presence. We delight in their company. So there tends to be
an emphasis on the feeling when we talk about love.
But Jesus isn’t using the word “love” in the way that we
would use it with the primary emphasis on a connotation of feelings. The Greek
word for love Jesus uses here is “agapae”. It connotes unconditional, total and
sacrificial love. It’s the kind of love that always wills something good for
the other that God shows towards us. The ultimate form we see in calvary. Man
is also created to manifest this love. The first sin was the fruit of the lack
of such sacrificial love on the part of Adam. It is a kind of love that we find
even in nature. Trees provide shade, even to those who cut them down. Likewise,
flowers provide their perfume even to those who harvest them. Similarly, we are
called to give our love to those who hurt us.
So Jesus’ emphasis of love falls on how we want to love and the
actions that would express that love. First, “loving my enemies” entails good
actions. That means, even though they hate us, we don’t return “eye for an eye”
or “tooth for a tooth”, but we return it with good action. So the first way we
show love for our enemies is to do good to them. It doesn’t say anything about
feelings. The emphasis is on actions here.
The best example we can find in the first reading (1 Sam 26).
Saul, the leader of God’s people, had wrongfully turned on David and attempted
to kill him motivated by jealousy and fear. David fled from Saul, but Saul
pursued with troops. On the occasion recounted in this reading, David snuck
into Saul’s camp at night and found himself with the opportunity to assassinate
Saul. Indeed this was tempting and may have looked like a providential
opportunity to David. Hadn’t God put all the soldiers into a deep sleep so that
David could dispatch his enemy? Wouldn’t it be better to end Saul’s reign now
and let the righteous David begin his reign? But David refused to slay Saul.
That is the first thing: do good to your enemies.
The second thing, if someone curses us, we are to bless
them. Loving is not just to do good towards somebody, but also to speak good to
somebody. If someone curses me, they speak evil against me (that’s what a curse
is). So to bless is to verbalize a desire for good upon the person. That’s the
second way to show them that I love them.
A third way, and I think this one is crucial, “pray for
those who hurt you.” It is crucial because the other two (the blessing and the
good actions) imply a certain amount of interaction, but prayer must happen in
our hearts.
Many times people ask how I can love this person who hurt
me? I don’t even want to be in their presence. Or it’s dangerous for me to be
in their presence. Even if we don’t come into contact with someone who’s an
enemy, or who hates us, or hurts us, we can always pray for them. The prayer is
for God to bless that person. We’re asking for good to be done to someone who
wishes harm to us; that is, loving your enemies.
It’s not going to come naturally to us to say, “I will
dedicate an hour of prayer for that person who hates me or I’m going to say a
rosary for this person who betrayed me or stole my job or hurt my family or
whatever it might be”. Hence, prayer is an expression of love. Because “agapae”
in its deepest sense is a kind of love that “will the good of another” or acts
in such a way that brings good to the other. It is not primarily rooted in “emotions”
but the “will”, in our choices: doing good, saying good, and praying for our
enemies. These are the three concrete actions that Jesus proposes to us in the
relationship with enemies.
It’s something unexpected and surprising. It seems
irrational because it’s not operating according to the logic of this world. It’s
the logic of the kingdom of God. It is the logic of the kingdom of God, the
logic of the Son of God who came into this world to be persecuted, struck on
the cheek in his Passion and not to fight back. Jesus who came into this world,
who is rich, but became poor for our sake so that we might be saved. He gives
to everyone His life, even for those who reject him. It is the logic of the
kingdom, and it is the logic of the cross. This is what Jesus speaks of with “love
your enemies”.
It is supernatural love and supernatural virtue. We often say,
“we should be able to go to heaven, we are good persons, we didn’t kill anybody,
we do good, we try to love people, we try to love our neighbours”, etc. That’s
all good, but in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not calling us to purely
natural virtue. We see natural virtues on display throughout all human
cultures. We see natural virtues on display outside of the Church (for sure) in
the lives of human beings who are “made good” (made in the image and likeness
of God, even though they’re sinful, they’re not completely deprived). We’ll see
all kinds of natural virtues operative in them. But Jesus is calling us to much
more than just natural virtue. He is calling us to supernatural virtues.
For this, we need Church and sacraments- to love as God
loves. In order to transmit His love to others. We need to become like God if
we want to love as God loves. How can we become like God? Through sacraments. Primarily
through the sacrament of Eucharist, through which we share His life. In the
sacrament of Baptism, we receive God’s supernatural life, and through the
sacrament of eucharist, we maintain the supernatural life. So let us rectify
our dispositions and cooperate with the grace we receive in the sacraments so
that it may fully work in us.
May God bless you!
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