Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies.”
Jesus calls anyone and everyone to join him in the Way of Love. It is an easy way when we are among family and friends. Thus, as Jesus says, “if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” Jesus calls us to “love your enemies.” Militarists believe such a Way is naïve. Naïve means to be lacking in worldly experience, to be foolish about reality. But lovers are not fools. We know all too well the time in which we live. We know in this moment that it is not a small thing when someone hates you. It is not a small thing when a whole group of people hate you or others. It is an especially big thing when a whole group of people who historically have great control and are taking ever greater control of institutions like business, education, law enforcement, media, politics, the sciences, and social services hate you or hate others. The consequences are wrought with suffering. It is because we are not naïve that we love, especially our enemies. We know the Way of Love is how transformation happens. When Jesus talks about love, he is not talking about our desire to feel something good. He is talking about our desire to help someone else feel something good, love. The person who is diminished of love has lost the essence of who they are. What love they share lacks any real power. Their love is limited to those who love them, but that too has its limits. That love too is withdrawn lest they show any compassion, any emotion other than hate. The person who hates needs us to love them. This is not to say they do not need our other virtues; courage, truth, peacemaking, and so forth. From whom shall we learn in this life? Will it be people who hate and who entice us to hate in turn? Jesus kept making the decision to love. He especially made the decision to love when he was around people who hate. Like him we need to be wise and not be exposed to haters for too long a time. While we are with them we concentrate on our breathing, breathing in and breathing forth the loving power of the Spirit.
“The world is here for what is not yet here. For more than a few; and even in Rome, Where men are so enamored of the Cross, That fame has echoed… the music of your love and of your faith to foreign ears… yet I wonder How much of love (we) know… But think you not the world is ashes yet, And you have all the fire. The world is here today, and it may not be gone tomorrow; For there are millions, and there may be more, To make in turn a various estimation Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps Of its apparent wrath… (and then) Many with eyes that are incredulous of the Mystery shall yet be driven to feel… Many that hate their kind are soon to know that without love their faith is but the perjured name of nothing.” (Edwin Arlington Robinson)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, may we always live as lovers within the conflicts of our time.
Question: How easily do we distance ourselves from the hate being spawned around us so that we are complicit with it rather than committed to transforming it with love?
February 23, 2025 Gospel Luke 6:27-38 Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time