Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time
Reflection: Learning to love your enemies
By SISTER MARY McGLONE
Weren’t last week’s readings enough? “Blessed are the poor.” Now, it’s “love your enemies.”
That’s pretty hard to take. So rather than jump straight into the Gospel, let’s start with our gentle Psalm refrain, “The Lord is kind and merciful.”
First of all, the word “kind.” While we may have human images of kindness, in Scripture the word refers primarily to God. We find the prototype description of God’s compassion or kindness in Exodus 22:26, which reveals that God always hears the cry of the poor. We can’t get away from that simple fact — God pays special attention to the poor.
Like kindness, the word merciful also refers first to God. Once again, Exodus offers instruction, describing multiple attributes of divine mercy. In Exodus 34 we read that the Lord is gracious (kind), merciful, slow to anger, abounding in love and fidelity, loving for a thousand generations and forgiving. In the New Testament, the word for mercy, eleos, indicates an insatiable desire to relieve the suffering of another. Unlike pity, which looks on another with care, mercy allows the other to get under your skin such that you feel impelled to do something about what is plaguing them. It’s a profound expression of love and solidarity, the choice to be in union with another. (These must be essential ingredients of marriage and friendship.)
In his book “Jesus Today,” Albert Nolan suggests that love of another recognizes that we are already one with each other, that all of creation is bound together and separateness is nothing more than a misperception of reality. As in God’s kindness and mercy, love of another implies an ever-growing embrace of our oneness — not as a goal, but as a fact that orients our thinking and therefore, our actions.
When I recognize my oneness with others, Jesus’ call to love the enemy takes a wholly (holy) new meaning. If I love my enemy as myself — even one who does me and/or others great harm — I will treat that person more like a wound than a threatening outsider. When we are wounded, we provide the maximal conditions for healing. So when someone seems to stand against me, the thing to do is pray for healing and avoid making the wound worse by irritating it.
Today, Jesus’ instructions get a particular focus. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In a globalizing world, that means that we approach others as mysteries to be understood. My tendency to give another what I would want misses the mark because it starts with me. Instead, in this age of synodality, we need to give one another something much deeper — the opportunity to be heard and understood as who they really are, not who we think they are. To treat them as they desire. (Do not judge.) It’s easy to love those we understand, it’s far more humanizing to learn to understand those who think differently from ourselves.
Jesus promises that when we do these things, our “reward will be great.” That isn’t a promise of a high place in heaven, as if there were degrees of being in the fullness of God’s presence. That’s a promise that both we and society will change for the happier as we do these things.
We will grow beyond our drive for individual self-preservation, realizing that we thrive only when all thrive. Picking and choosing who we will love and who we will not, is self-destructive behavior. Avoiding those we don’t understand — or don’t want to understand — is like living on junk food: We miss the nourishment of the diversity of who we really are together. We’re stunting the growth we can experience when we allow ourselves to be drawn forth in new ways by different kinds of people.
Like the Beatitudes, which sound like an upside-down path to happiness, Jesus’ ongoing instructions offer us an enigmatic invitation to human flourishing. As with the risk involved in any choice to love, moving beyond the backyard of our social, national, linguistic, racial and class circles give birth to new depths of being in us.
Because Jesus tells us to be merciful as our Father is merciful, we can believe that loving our enemies is possible. God’s kindness and mercy are graces to which we can be open because God lives in us and with us. Faith assures us that we are capable of cooperating with grace. Today, we are invited to be among those who really hear what Jesus is saying.
Reading I
(I Samuel 26: 2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23)
In those days, Saul went down to the desert of Ziph
with three thousand picked men of Israel,
to search for David in the desert of Ziph.
So David and Abishai went among Saul’s soldiers by night
and found Saul lying asleep within the barricade,
with his spear thrust into the ground at his head
and Abner and his men sleeping around him.
Abishai whispered to David:
“God has delivered your enemy into your grasp this day.
Let me nail him to the ground with one thrust of the spear;
I will not need a second thrust!”
But David said to Abishai, “Do not harm him,
for who can lay hands on the LORD’s anointed and remain unpunished?”
So David took the spear and the water jug from their place at Saul’s head,
and they got away without anyone’s seeing or knowing or awakening.
All remained asleep,
because the LORD had put them into a deep slumber.
Going across to an opposite slope,
David stood on a remote hilltop
at a great distance from Abner, son of Ner, and the troops.
He said: “Here is the king’s spear.
Let an attendant come over to get it.
The LORD will reward each man for his justice and faithfulness.
Today, though the LORD delivered you into my grasp,
I would not harm the LORD’s anointed.”
Responsorial Psalm
(Psalm 103: 1-4, 8, 10, 12-13)
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.
R The Lord is kind and merciful.
Reading II
(I Corinthians 15: 45-49)
Brothers and sisters:
It is written, The first man, Adam, became a living being,
the last Adam a life-giving spirit.
But the spiritual was not first;
rather the natural and then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, earthly;
the second man, from heaven.
As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly,
and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly.
Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one,
we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.
Gospel
(Luke 6: 27-38)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“To you who hear I say,
love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
To the person who strikes you on one cheek,
offer the other one as well,
and from the person who takes your cloak,
do not withhold even your tunic.
Give to everyone who asks of you,
and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
For if you love those who love you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do the same.
If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners lend to sinners,
and get back the same amount.
But rather, love your enemies and do good to them,
and lend expecting nothing back;
then your reward will be great
and you will be children of the Most High,
for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
“Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give, and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”