Saturday in the First Week of Lent, February 27, 2021

Matthew 5:43-48

Jesus said to his disciples: “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 Mosaic Law introduced a uniform, distinct code of law into the lives of the members of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Before the giving of the Law, justice was accorded arbitrarily by the heads of each tribe, or sometimes by the local ruler.  Among the Law’s precepts was a very simple one: You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  This law bound the communities within the tribes together both by defining the people within the communities as neighbors with whom one had a likeness in terms of culture and proximity, and by defining those outside the community, the tribe, and the twelve tribes, as their “enemy”, against whom they must be united for safety.  The status of the outsider as an enemy did not necessarily identify him as a target for violence, however.  One could engage in trade with enemies and live in peace with them.  But the outsider was to be treated with suspicion, as a potential attacker.  The twelve tribes of Israel shared a common interest always; with those from the outside, occasionally.  And sometimes an outsider performed some act that warranted active hostility.

The Lord Jesus fulfills this law when he teaches that all people are loved by God and that therefore we are all neighbors of one another.  The true enemy, the true outsider, is the devil, who fights against God, whom he cannot touch, through the human race, which he could, before the coming of the Lord.  We are all neighbors, Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans.  And yet some individuals may threaten others in some way.  These are personal enemies and may even be members of one’s own household.  The Lord teaches us in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, that we are even to love these as well.

When we love those whom it is easy or natural to love, we gain no special merit.  Even the godless do this.  But loving those who are difficult to love so that love becomes work, this is real love and is meritorious.  This can only be done by God’s grace.  Loving the lovable is joyous and a gift God gives us.  Loving the unlovable is grimy, in-the-trenches work.  This can mean acting in a civil way to uncivil persons, and refusing to join in the gossip and complaints with which many people try to cope in having to live or work with them.  At the same time we do not excuse people in our minds when there really is no excuse, nor should we pretend that a person is not as wretched as he acts.  Love is about loving the person as he is, not as we pretend or wish him to be.  Above all things, this means praying for the person’s conversion, and then, when possible, giving a good example.  This is a gift we give God and it is meritorious because this makes us like God, who makes his sun shine on the wicked and the good.  

We might wonder why God causes his sun to shine on the wicked and the good.  He does so because perfect Love does not allow anyone or anything to keep it from loving all people.  Love loves without distinction.  However, the wicked and the good experience God’s love or the signs and effects of his love in very different ways.  The wicked will not understand the good that is offered to them, such as good health, as coming from God, and so will miss out on the joy that comes from knowing God’s care in this way.  Because they do not believe in God, they have no one in whom they can trust to preserve their health.  It is all random, or “luck” to them.  This results in their living in a grim world where pleasure might exist here and there, but joy does not.

God, who is perfect Love, calls us to perfection as well: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  We often interpret “perfect” in terms of power: doing some work “perfectly”, that is, without evident flaw.  But the old adage “No one is perfect” applies here, and for many people, perfection in power is a continuously vanishing goal, a siren that lures people to exhaustion and, finally, destruction.  The perfection to which we are called is in love.  No one can love as much as God can love, but each of us can love as much as we can.  For examples we can look to the saints.  St. Therese lived such a life of love that she could speak as her last words, “My God, I love you!”  St. Maximilian Kolbe lived such a life of love that he could offer his life to save that of a complete stranger.  Mother Teresa loved so perfectly that she was able to give herself up to the care of the most utterly abandoned souls on the planet.  Each of us, wherever we are and wherever God calls us, can love fully, as God does.