This morning’s Gospel reading is 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.”

Oddly enough, this very question came up recently in an exchange with a longtime correspondent. As a result, I had an aha! moment when I read through today’s Gospel passage and the other readings for today.

The question came up a bit indirectly in the exchange. My friend will write on occasion when he disagrees with a specific point I’ve made or at least wants more clarification as to my intent. He always does so with great respect and always on points that I have either left out or made unclear. He’s the farthest thing from a troll, in other words.

In this case, he was genuinely puzzled about a passage I had written about a Democrat recovering from an illness, in which I wished him a speedy recovery. He expressed appreciation for my words on this, but wondered how far I could possibly take it. If the absence of this person allowed my preferred policies to prevail, would I be as anxious to see him recover? In fact, he posited a hypothetical: if this person’s presence resulted in pro-abortion policies that resulted in the deaths of thousands, wouldn’t I prefer to cheer for his continuing affliction, or worse?

And that question stumped me for a bit. Normally I would have responded to his letters right away, but I wanted to think this one over. I kept coming back to the Sermon on the Mount and this passage, which creates some of the greatest cognitive dissonance we experience in the Gospel. My friend’s hypothetical — and really not that much of a hypothetical in today’s political climate — really drove the difficulty of this teaching home to me.

And let’s remind ourselves that we first have to define “enemies” very carefully. We do not have “enemies” in domestic politics, except in rare and extreme cases. We have “opponents” who see policy choices from different sets of values. (My friend did not use the term “enemies,” just to be clear.) Sometimes those differences have real impact in terms of life and death, and abortion is one of those cases. But our political opponents are not looking to kill us, which is how we’d define “enemy” in a realistic sense.

Of course, in Judea, the Israelites had an omnipresent enemy — the Romans, who were subjugating and in some cases slaughtering them. They had an ongoing feud with the Samaritans as well, and conflicts within their own polity that rose to life-or-death situations — Jesus being the most notable of those.

And yet Jesus does not say, “Love your opponents, because they are just misguided neighbors.” Jesus told them to love your enemies, and then proceeded to be very specific to what He meant. “Do good to those who hate you,” Jesus preached; if they hit you, steal from you, oppress you, the correct response is love — not eros, not philos, but the self-sacrificing agape love that puts their well-being ahead of yours. Loving a Pharisee in such a manner might have been a stretch for those coming to Jesus’ sermon, but loving the Romans? It would have been unthinkable, and yet Jesus commanded that kind of love to all as the path for salvation.

We see this modeled in our first reading today from 1 Samuel, when David and his soldiers come across a sleeping Saul. Saul had led an army to kill David, whom he now knew was a rival for God’s affection. Saul was very much David’s enemy, and yet even though David would have been justified in the law in slaying Saul, David spared him instead. Saul was also the Lord’s anointed, and David trusted in the Lord that He would judge Saul and keep David safe.

And this is the key to Jesus’ preaching: faith. We pray for our enemies and our opponents and love them because they are also children of God. We want them to find their way to salvation because we love God, and through Him we love all His children. Rather than seeking vengeance on our own for wrongs done to us, we have to put our faith in the Lord as David did in Saul’s tent and pray for their redemption.

My friend’s note to me made me think about this in real terms, too, although not as pressing as some deal with on a daily basis where the stakes are entirely personal. Those circumstances test us in terms of how much faith we really have in the Lord. Do we trust in Him that He will prevail in the end, and choose the path of love? Or do we have no faith in Him, and instead hate opponents and enemies and plot to bring about our own narrow version of a Promised Land?

As difficult as it is in each of these crises to adhere to faith, that is the path that we should choose. And just as we pray for our opponents and enemies to come to the Lord, remember that others have prayed for us to find that path too. We are all lost to some degree, and that sure knowledge of our own unworthiness and need for grace should remind us of the need for solidarity with all of the rest of God’s children.

It’s not easy, and no one said it would be — least of all Jesus Himself. That is why He died for us, to sacrifice for our shortcomings and stumbles along His path. That teaching can see us through some of the difficult choices we have as we make our way imperfectly, haltingly, and sometimes grudgingly on that same road. Loving one another gives us the strength to make it the rest of the way.

The front-page image is a detail from “The Sermon on the Mount” by Carl Bloch, 1877. Currently on display at The Museum of Natural History. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.