The First Saturday of Lent

You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers and sisters only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The world tells us to love our neighbors and hate our enemies, but Jesus gives us a new commandment. We are to love and pray for our enemies so that we can become true children of God. This is a difficult commandment to live with, but it is one that helps scrape away the imperfections of our hearts. If we can love those who hate and persecute us, then we shall be able to understand, if only in some small way, the feeling of rejection Jesus felt as all his followers abandoned him and the people of Jerusalem turned away from him. We can gain a tiny glimpse of the unrequited love he poured out upon those who struck, spat upon, scourged, and crucified him. And not just those people present during His Passion, but all sinners from the beginning of the world to the end. Each in our own way has been the enemy of Jesus at one point in our life or another. This is why it is so important for us to learn how to love our enemies because we will be treated by God in the same way as we treated them. So let us put aside our pride and be willing to accept the slings and arrows of our enemies and respond only with the love of Christ.

Do we love our enemies as Jesus asks us to and thereby unite ourselves with his Passion? How can we do a better job of forgiving and even loving those who persecute and hate us? Are we willing to love others without the expectation of return?

O Lord, give us the grace to love our enemies.

Amen.