Love your enemies

Perhaps one of the hardest teachings of Jesus is his plea to love everyone, especially your enemies. Notice Jesus says nothing about 'liking'—however, there is a clear injunction to 'love'. In our first reading today from Leviticus, the Lord God helps Moses to see the implications of true love:

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people - but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord. (Lev 19:18)

So often when we have been harmed or hurt intentionally, our reaction is to reject the offender. They have deliberately set out to hurt in any way possible, and yet we are called to forgive—even offer the other cheek. It is so hard, and Pope Francis offers a simple solution. Just as the love of God is unconditional, so forgiveness must be unconditional too—he sees it as a human right:

We all have the right to be forgiven if we ask for forgiveness. It is a right that comes from the very nature of God and has been given as an inheritance to men. We have forgotten that someone who asks for forgiveness has the right to be forgiven. [Some might say] 'You've done something [wrong], you have to pay for it.' No! You have the right to be forgiven, and if you owe a debt to society, you can find a way to pay it, but with forgiveness.

I would hope that I would have the strength to forgive those who have hurt me with the spirit and courage of someone like Nelson Mandela. Imprisoned by the apartheid government of South Africa and ignored for so long by the great democracies of the world, including our own, he knew that he had to forgive. As he walked to freedom, after decades of torture and cruelty, he knew that he had to open his heart to those who had perpetuated the evil against him. If he was unable to forgive, he argued, part of his life would still be in a prison cell:

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of their skin, or their background, or their religion. They must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

Jesus did not just give good and solid teaching, his life, passion and death is testament to the power of his witness. His cry from the cross on Golgotha echoes throughout the world in the actions of all those prepared to offer forgiveness:

Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (Lk 23:34)

Certainly, our gospel today is a challenge to go that 'extra mile': who knows what good and genuine reconciliation you could achieve this week? We can be critical of governments and institutions, but true forgiveness is a gift that each one of us can offer. It will take courage, and we will need to be counter-cultural. The selfish and the narcissists among us need to be challenged, and even disarmed, by the totality of our love. The consequences of the "eye for an eye" philosophy result in an endless cycle of violence. We need to heed the sage advice of the great Indian leader, Gandhi:

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Jesus comes to give new vision and light in those dark places of our lives. We can be part of the solution in being a Church of acceptance and unconditional reconciliation. Another great practitioner of non-violent resistance was Dr Martin Luther King Jr. No matter the slurs, vitriol and violence, he maintained a level of dignity and true care that we would do well to practice, as he reminds us:

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Author: Fr Gerry O'Shaughnessy SDB

Photo by Melanie Stander on Unsplash