Reflection for Sunday 23rd February, 2025
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Love your Enemy! (Luke 6:27-32)
Ideals are like stars: we may never reach them but we chart our course by them. Certainly, some of the ideals of Christ are beyond our natural powers. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly.”
What a challenge! Jesus did not allow the wrongs of others to contaminate his love. He prayed for those who were crucifying him. The greatest proof of authentic Christianity is being willing to forgive.
"Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven.”The supernatural power of God’s grace
Forgiveness is not easy. In fact, you could say that forgiveness is not natural. It must come from a supernatural force ... what we call grace. When we are faced with a problem of forgiveness, what can we do? Bitter memories, anger and maybe the desire for vengeance will burrow their way into the memory and heart. Darkness envelopes our thinking and a hard shell grows around the heart.
There is no point in saying to someone, "Ah, forget it!" You cannot switch off memory like a tap. We do not have the option of remembering or forgetting. But the option we do have is how we remember. We can remember with bitterness or we can implore God to lift us up to a higher plane of thinking where our remembering will be more compassionate and forgiving. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (368) offers this advice: "It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offence, but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming hurt into intercession." The Holy Spirit can lift us up to the bigger picture. We begin to see that it was sickness of character that caused the offender to do wrong. I remember meeting an old lady who was breathless just after a young man had robbed her purse. Her immediate reaction was to pray for that sick person who would attack an old lady. Pity for any sick character can turn hatred into compassion. And prayer for that sick mind replaces words of bitterness. Never forget the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.
In his famous book, The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm says that love is more than infatuation, attraction, or compatibility of character. Love resides in the will. It is a decision to be positive. It is a stance one takes for life. True Christianity is a powerful river of love that refuses to be polluted by the wrongdoing of others.
God’s love is unconditional
The ideal that Jesus sets before us is that we should be mirrors of God's compassionate love. "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap; because the standard you use will be the standard used for you.”
Saint John tells us that God is love. That means that God’s love for all his creatures is never less than one-hundred per cent. God’s love is unconditional. It is not dependent on our fulfilment of any conditions.
Trust in the Holy Spirit
The dream of Jesus was for a world where the Father’s unconditional love would be reflected in the lives of his children on earth. He saw the barriers of distrust removed and the walls of hatred dismantled. He saw the hurts of life healed by compassion and the wounds of remembrance healed by forgiveness. The ideal he set before his disciples is to “love one another as I have loved you.” Where will this supernatural power come from? Saint Paul has the answer. “Hope will not let us down, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). This year 2025 is a Jubilee Year anchored in hope.
Prayer
Come Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful. Enkindle within us the fire of your love. May the heat of this fire melt all hardness of heart and mould us into the likeness of Christ.
