Saturday, Week of 1 Lent

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45).

Once again, today’s reading drives home the point that relationship with God is alj about love.

This time, Jesus is asking us for the hardest thing: to love our enemies. We all have people in our lives (or past) who have hurt us, who have done something wrong to us, or who just plain have something against us. We all have people whom we have deeply hurt or wronged. It seems impossible that genuine reconciliation and relationships could ever arise between us. Forgiving them is one thing, but expecting those relationships to return to the way they were before the hurt happened is largely impossible.

But still, Jesus asks us to love them. That starts at the most basic levels: not holding on to anger, not talking about them behind their backs, not plotting revenge. If we do run into them, we are supposed to treat them with dignity and respect.

More drastically, love may call us to ask for or offer forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting what happened – no one, including God, ever forgets. But it does mean being willing to not let the past hang over us, not letting anger or hurt totally define our feelings for that person. It means, fundamentally, being open to the reality that God can and does love the people who have hurt us and whom we have hurt: “for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (5:45). Loving our enemies, so as to be a son of God, means responding to them knowing that they are beloved of the Lord.

It may be that our enemies will never come to us asking forgiveness. It may be that we never come across them again. But when we think of them, we should make an effort to let go of our anger, anger that leads us to dwell in the past with painful memories rather than living in the present for the future. If they come to us, we should be open to hearing them out. If we see they are in need, we should not pass them by any more than we would pass by a stranger we met along the way.

We are called to live lives of compassion and mercy, like our Father in heaven.