THE call to love is always seductive. Surely, many graciously welcomed Jesus\u2019 call to love God and to love our neighbour.\u00a0 But what they couldn\u2019t imagine is that one day he would speak to them about loving their enemies.<\/p>\n
However, Jesus did just that. Without any backing from the biblical tradition, distancing himself from the vengeance psalms that fed the people\u2019s prayer, confronting the general climate of hate that breathed all around him, Jesus proclaimed his call with absolute clarity: \u201cBut I say this to you: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you\u201d.<\/p>\n
His language is outrageous and surprising, but completely coherent with his experience of God. The Father isn\u2019t violent: God loves even enemies, doesn\u2019t seek anyone\u2019s destruction. God\u2019s greatness doesn\u2019t consist in vengeance but in unconditionally loving everyone.<\/p>\n
Love of enemy is not a secondary teaching of Jesus, directed to the people who are called to a heroic perfection. His call wants to introduce into history a new attitude in the face of the enemy because he wants to eliminate hate and destructive violence from the world. Whoever is like God will not nourish hate against anyone but will seek the good of all, including their enemies.<\/p>\n
When Jesus speaks of love of enemy, he isn\u2019t asking us to nourish feelings of affection or sympathy or tenderness toward the one who does us evil. The enemy continues being someone from whom we can expect harm, and its difficult for us to be able to change the feelings of our heart.<\/p>\n
Love our enemy means above all not to do him evil, to not seek or desire to do him evil. We don\u2019t need to get upset if we don\u2019t feel any love toward him. It\u2019s natural that we feel ourselves wounded or humiliated. But we do need to worry when we keep feeding hate and thirst for vengeance.<\/p>\n
We need to remember that we are more human when we forgive than when we take vengeance. Sincere forgiveness of enemy isn\u2019t easy. In some circumstances we could find it particularly impossible to free ourselves from rejecting him, from hating or thirsting for vengeance.<\/p>\n
No one needs to judge anyone from the outside. Only God understands us and forgives unconditionally, even when we aren\u2019t capable of forgiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE call to love is always seductive. Surely, many graciously welcomed Jesus\u2019 call to love God and to love our neighbour.\u00a0 But what they couldn\u2019t imagine is that one day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homily-notes","category-pastoral-messages"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2622,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions\/2622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}