“LOVE your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5, 44); these words of Christ belong to the most distinctive features of his preaching. Perhaps they often contrast with our most immediate reactions. We realize that these are not words that require a superficial response, as if we are being asked to yield to those who do us wrong; it is much more: we must love and pray.
“Jesus’ words are clear (…). And it is not an option, and it is a command (…) He knows very well that loving our enemies is beyond our ability, so he became a man: not to leave us as we are, but to transform us into men and women capable of greater love, the love of theirs and our Father (…). This command to respond to insults and evil with love, created a new culture in the world: the culture of mercy (…). It is a revolution of love, the protagonists of which are the martyrs of all times”[1].
To achieve this, we place all our hope in grace. “I want to keep your precepts, never leave me” (Ps 119, 8), we pray in the psalm. God’s help works not only in our will but also in our minds and hearts. “I believe that I have no enemies,” wrote St. Josemaría at the time of the persecution. “In my life, I met people who hurt me, positively harmed me. I don’t think they’re enemies: I’m too small to have them. However, from now on they are included in the category of my benefactors, so I can entrust them to our Lord every day”[2].
God sends rain on the good and the bad…
“WHAT REASON DO YOU HAVE not to love?” asks St. John Chrysostom. “That’s the other answered your kindness with insults? That he wanted to shed your blood in gratitude for your favors? But if you love for Christ, these are reasons to love all the more. Because what destroys the friendships of this world strengthens the love of Christ. How? First, that ungrateful person is the cause of a greater reward for you. Secondly, this one needs more help and more intensive care”[3]. How gray the world would be if all people were the same and all were equally pleasant to us! This is not the reality, and Jesus asks us to love, pray for and serve everyone. To think otherwise reminds us of Cain’s words burning with envy and hatred: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gn 4:9).
If we turn our gaze to Christ, his love for all people will be heard in our soul: “That you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. After all, he makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5, 45). “Today it will do us good to remember an enemy – I think each of us has one – who has done us wrong, or who wants to do us wrong, or who is trying to do us wrong. Let’s pray for him. Let us ask the Lord to give us the grace to love him”[4]. However, we don’t have to think about distant places, battlefields, or powerful enemies. Maybe even at home, we must fight to understand, forgive, and not hold grudges against our brother, daughter, or husband. How often have we seen grace make possible what we could not imagine before?
To bring the battlefield into our own lives…
“PEOPLE WITHOUT THE DESIRE TO CORRECT themselves are those who cease to pay attention to their own sins to focus on the sins of others,” writes St. Augustine. “They are not looking for what needs to be fixed, but what they can bite. And since they cannot justify themselves, they are always ready to accuse others”[5]. Accepting the task of loving our enemies means that we also learn to focus on our weaknesses, mistakes, and everything that has yet to be identified with Christ. This attitude is imbued with a much greater practical realism because what we can change with God’s help is what we have in our hearts. We leave the imaginary battlefield – the lives of others – to fill the world with the good of a much closer struggle. We let God change the course of history while we fix the one we have.
“We must be able to excuse everyone, and we must be able to forgive everyone. We will not call the unjust righteous, we will not say that insulting God is not an insult to God, and we will not call evil good. However, we will not respond to evil with other evil, but with clear teaching and good deeds: we will drown evil in the abundance of good (cf. Rom 12, 21)”[6]. It’s not that we don’t correct ourselves when circumstances call for it. It’s not about naivety but quite the opposite: acquiring God’s wisdom. A mature, generous, prudent love can forget wrongs, ignore errors of appreciation, gain courage, and imitate Christ on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23, 34). We can ask Our Lady, Queen of Peace, to teach us to love all her children, to pray for those who may have harmed us, and to help us transfer the battlefield to our souls: to fight against ourselves and not against others.
