Seventh Sunday C in ordinary time. Luke 6,27-38

Love your enemies.

When we look at the world, we see a lot of evil, crime, violence, and we certainly wish we could change that. Power, punishment, or even the fear of death will help little here. Only love could succeed, for love is stronger than death. When God created the world, “he saw all that he had made, and it was perfect.” (Gen 1:31) So, where does this evil of the world come from? The intelligent creatures, angels, and then humans, who abused God’s gift of freedom and their sin, their rebellion against God, destroyed the world’s harmony. There was strife, adversity. In the physical world, natural disasters, in animals violence of the strong against the weak, but only to preserve life, how much is enough to feed themselves.

Only man abuses his reason even to invent evil, and the devil tempts men to enmity coupled with murder. The first case was already among the grandparents’ children when Cain killed his brother Abel. (Gen. 4. 8). Through the evolution of humanity, people have invented technical aids to make life easier. Still, human wickedness, again only out of temptation from the devil, also misuses these as weapons to kill people. This wickedness grows in proportion as man moves away from God. And in our time, evil is at its height because men deceived by the devil deny God and arrogate to themselves God’s power over human life and death. They demonstrated this in the last war in the gulags and gas ovens, and they continue to kill the innocent through abortion and euthanasia.

In all this, the fundamental law of God that we are not to do evil is proclaimed in the human heart, and killing a human being is evil in itself by definition. This gradually mitigated human wickedness and criminality, at least to the extent that they killed only seemingly harmful enemies but spared their loved ones and harmless distant ones. God’s revelation and education in the chosen nation mitigated the wanton killing. Yet, in the Old Testament, we read the destruction of whole tribes after being overwhelmed, which is hard to understand today.

Occasionally there were noble exceptions, as when the now-mentioned David spared his persecutor Saul because of religious feeling, “I will not stretch out my hand upon him, for he is the Lord’s anointed.” (1 Sam 34:7). The Israelites had a law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev 19:18), but they considered only a member of Israel as a neighbor. With the Gentiles, it was even worse because enslaved people were worth less than cattle.

And it was into these circumstances that Jesus came with his doctrine of love. It was a new revolution, and like all revolutions, it changed the way we live, tearing down the old and building up the unique in its path. Some revolutions advance their agendas with violence with hatred, and they destroy and murder their opponents. Christ’s revolution is a revolution of love; it renews all things, it brings flourishing, joy, happiness. Indeed, it cannot be done without sacrifice, for life often has to be changed from the ground up. Already from the Old Testament, the law of love of neighbor is extended by Christ to all: “That you may love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 15:12) But he asks for the pinnacle of love previously unthinkable: “Love your enemies.” (Lk 6:27).

Some are shocked by this, others oppose it, and some smile at its impossibility. Even if it is impossible for man, all things are possible for God. Let us consider how to proceed. In the first place, we must forgive the enemy; only in this way will we gain understanding and peace. Even the second degree is acceptable: what you want men to do to you, do also to them. And when it seems complicated to love even the enemy, one must consider the depth of that demand. God does not ask us to love the sin, but the sinner, who is our brother and a child of God, for we are all children of God and so brothers and sisters. A brother and sister can be loved even when they are evil. Finally, let us consider the whole personality of a person and the circumstances that shape them, as Jesus showed on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk 6:29)

And this program of Christ was embraced by his disciples, and Christianity transformed the whole world. What is good in the world today, even the declaration of human rights has its basis in the new teachings of Christ. It works in two directions. “Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mk 8:34) And for interpersonal relationships, “Do not resist evil.” (Mt 5:39). “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Tim 12:21). Christians in Christ’s Church from the beginning to our time have been overcoming and improving the world with the power of Christ. In the early Church, by the power of love, they abolished slavery. By the power of suffering from their blood, the martyrs overcame the persecution of the Roman emperors and achieved both freedom and the transformation of hatred into fraternal coexistence.

And the Church of Christ, by truth, love, and suffering, overcomes her enemies, as evidenced by the fall of godless communism and the fruit of the love of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and the respect of even the infidel potentates for the Roman Pope… And if only all of us Catholic Christians lived the faith of Christ to the full, our faith would overcome the world and change everything for the better. Let us take advantage of the coming Lenten season and turn to the Lord our God.