The
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Even to those who were raised in the
Christian faith nearly since the day of their birth, some of Jesus’ teachings
still strike them as extreme, out of touch, and maybe even unreasonable. We
hear one of these teachings today: “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27).
Because words mean something and because we
cannot love our enemies without knowing who they are, I began digging into the
etymology of the word enemy. Our English word comes from the Latin inimicus,
which literally means “unfriend.” This would seem to mean that an enemy is
someone who is not my friend, but this seems rather extreme; could everyone who
is not my friend really be my enemy?
Digging a little deeper, I learned the
Greek word for enemy is polemioi, which is distinct from another Greek
word, ekthroi. Here I thought I was on to something and pulled out my
Greek New Testament to discover which of the two words Jesus used. He used ekthroi,
meaning one who is hated or who is hostile, one intent on inflicting harm. In
Greek, though, the prefix of this word – ek – means “out of,” but I could not
discover the meaning of throi. What are my ekthroi, my enemies,
out of?
One source pointed me to the probable Proto
Indo-European origins from ek, still meaning out of, and ros, but
the only meaning for ros I could discover suggested the suffix made the
previous part of the word in the past, as in “outed,” but still outed from
what? Out of the house, the family, the city? I was getting nowhere; sometimes
searching the scriptures can be frustrating (cf. John 5:39).
The Greek word for friends is philoi,
so it did not seem possible that the ekthroi are the ones who are cast
out of my friends because the words are not the same, yet that seems to be
precisely the meaning of the word. The Greeks seemed to use this word in the same
sense we use “my ex” for a former lover or spouse. In this sense, then, Jesus
commands us to love those who betray us, or even those whom we betray, as well
as who wish us – or those to whom we wish - harm.
Setting aside God’s revelation as the
Trinity, as a tripartite communion of love, the most unexpected aspect of the
teachings of Jesus Christ is his command to love not only those who love us,
but to also love those who hate us, who persecute us, and who wish us dead.
Love
of one's enemy constitutes the nucleus of the "Christian revolution,"
a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power: the
revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but
is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his
merciful goodness. Here is the newness of the Gospel which silently changes the
world! Here is the heroism of the "lowly" who believe in God's love
and spread it, even at the cost of their lives.[1]
In this revolution of love, we see without
question that authentic love is more than a matter of emotions. Indeed, love is
something far greater than feelings that come and go.
To help us understand what love is, Jesus gives
“a whole series of words that express a declension of love: bless, offer, do
not reject, give, do good, lend, be merciful, do not judge, forgive. To love
means all these things.”[2]
To
put it perhaps more directly, more bluntly, it is as if Jesus says to us:
You
must love, yes, but also those who do not love you… You must bless, yes, but
also those who curse you… You must give, yes, but without expecting anything in
return… You also have to forgive those who have hurt you and will probably
continue to do so.
And
this applies to everything, to every area of life, to every area of our daily
relationships.
So
it’s not just about learning to love, but accepting that those who love are
always on the losing end.
It
is not possible to love in the hope of getting something out of it: That is an
illusion.
Loving
means accepting that you have accounts that are in the red, accounts that do
not open, accounts that are open.[3]
To love as Jesus commands means to always
be, as it were, on the losing end of love; it means rarely – if ever – having
our love reciprocated. How can we do so? Is it not too much for us?
To love in this way may indeed seem too
much to ask of us, to require of us, too much for us frail and mortal humans.
However, as J.R.R. Tolkien says, “we do not know our own limits of natural
strength (+grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall
short of utmost that we could achieve.”[4] We trust too much in
ourselves and too little in the grace of God.
The command to love even my enemies is an
unquestionably tall order, but we must remember that
…Christ's
proposal is realistic because it takes into account that in the world there
is too much violence, too much injustice, and
therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it
with more love, with more goodness.
This "more" comes from God: it is his mercy which was
made flesh in Jesus and which alone can "tip the balance" of the
world from evil to good, starting with that small and decisive
"world" which is the human heart.
…It
does not consist in succumbing to evil, as a false interpretation of
"turning the other cheek" (cf. Luke 6:29) claims, but in responding
to evil with good (cf. Romans 12:17-21) and thereby breaking the chain of
injustice.[5]
We can only tip the balance and break the
chain by keeping the two-fold command of love of God and love of neighbor, by
loving as Jesus loves, by loving to the end, by loving to the Cross. The lives
of so many of the Saints show us that loving is possible, and they show us how
to live out the love of Christ Jesus in our daily lives. One need only think of
Saint Josephine Bakhita or the Venerable Servant of God Augustine Tolton for
proof of this.
 |
| Detail, Crucifixion, Morgan Library, M. 300, fol. 3r. |
It is on the Cross that we see most clearly
that Jesus “does not limit himself merely to affirming his love, but makes it
visible and tangible. Love, after all, can never be just an abstraction.”[6] Our love, too, must be
more than an affirmation or an abstraction; our love, too, must be visible and
tangible; our love must look like his.
Love can never be a question of a
tit-for-tat. We cannot keep a tally of who has repaid our love, or to what
degree our love has been repaid. This is not the way of love, for to love is
always to be vulnerable. We see this by looking at the Cross. If our love is to
look like that of Jesus, if it is to be tangible and not an abstraction, we
must follow Jesus declension of love: bless, we must offer, not reject, give,
do good, lend, be merciful, not judge, and forgive.
Jesus did not weigh the full depths of his
love for us over and against our too-often shallow love for him. He simply
loved to the end and gave himself fully for us. When we grow discouraged
because our love is not returned, let us not focus on ourselves and what we
think we deserve. Rather, let us implore the Lord to draw us deeper into his
heart, wounded in love for us, until our love becomes like to his own. Amen.
[1]
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 18 February 2007.
[2]
Pierbattista Cardinal Pizzaballa, O.F.M., Meditation for the Seventh Sunday in
Ordinary Time, 23 February 2025.
[3]
Pierbattista Cardinal Pizzaballa, O.F.M., Meditation for the Seventh Sunday in
Ordinary Time, 23 February 2025.
[4]
J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 246, To Mrs. Eileen Elgar (draft), September
1963.
[5]
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 18 February 2007.
[6]
Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, 9.
