SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
‘Love your enemies’
The desire for revenge is a built-in feature of
human nature. Our natural instinct is to strike
back in response to some perceived harm or
wrongdoing by another party, to give as good as
we get, to ‘get even’, but Jesus offers us a radically
different approach when He says: ‘Love your
enemies’. He doesn’t ask His disciples to ‘fall in
love’ with their enemies, but to be stubbornly
gracious to them. It’s probably the most difficult
command that He gave them and us. It goes
against the grain and challenges conventional
wisdom. It calls us to turn away from the path
of hatred and revenge, which is ugly, dark,
dreary and self-destructive. ‘If you seek revenge
you should dig two graves, one for yourself’.
(Confucius). Hatred and revenge have caused
many problems in the human family, but they
have not solved one yet. It is love alone that
can deliver us a future. The great 16th century
Spanish Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross
caught the beauty of the Lord’s teaching when he
said: ‘Where there is no love pour in love and
you will draw-out love’. It’s a high ideal. It’s not
easy to pardon the seemingly unpardonable, to
love the seemingly unloveable. Christian love
hurts and costs, but the reward is out of this
world.
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