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February 24, 2024The love that Jesus invites us to show for our enemies can seem to be a harsh burden at times. If we’re being honest, it feels quite unnatural, or even impossible at times to love those who have wronged us. Wouldn’t it be safer to simply love those who are our friends and acquaintances? Absolutely. But Our Lord desires something more than safety and comfort for us. He desires that we “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In some sense, Jesus is saying that our very lives are incomplete until we are able to love our enemies because our perfection lies in loving as the Father loves.
So how are we to love even our enemies? I think that it requires us to have a constant divine perspective of each person we encounter. It can be easy to forget the dignity of another after they have wronged us and conflate their value with their unjust behavior. However, God makes no such distinctions for he “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” Only when we constantly have the truth before us that everybody, even the unjust person, is loved by God and are “people peculiarly his own” will we be capable of practicing divine love.
[click here for the readings of the day]
