It’s (in my pastoral opinion) the toughest teaching of Jesus, and it challenges us to call down help from Heaven to carry it out. May we honestly consider who is difficult to love in our lives today and strive with the Lord’s help to love…even our enemies.
Perhaps one of the toughest teachings in Christianity is found in the Gospel of Matthew today. Yet this command to love our enemies offers a practical path that unites us to the example of Jesus.
This is one of the toughest teachings to carry out in Christianity. Love is often something we cherish…until we are called upon to love someone who has hurt us or those we care about. Yet without this crucial command we cannot heal and grow as children of God.
The Lord’s teaching in Luke’s Gospel has powerful consequences for our spiritual lives. When we love – especially in difficult moments of conflict – we embrace the grace of Christ and live the gift of life at full power. This is not an easy teaching! The Lord, however, is always near to help us put his love into practice.
Perhaps one of the most demanding teachings of Christ, the passage from Matthew’s Gospel challenges us to put this command of God to the toughest test, as we love the hardest group of all…our enemies.
We find in this selection from the Sermon on the Mount one of the hardest teachings of Jesus: to love our enemies. Yet when we do this we cleanse our hearts of hate and fill them with God’s grace, so that we will be prepared to follow Christ in this life and be with Him in the next.
“Love your enemies” is one of the toughest teachings of Jesus. Yet these words continue to show us a path forward in the face of hatred, violence and persecution…revealing that there is something that can heal our hearts and renew our lives: God’s love.
The stress and tension of the recent riots, compounded by COVID-19 concerns, reveals the crucial need to carry out the love of Christ that we hear about in the Gospel of Mark today.
It’s the classic test of the depth of our response to the Lord’s command…to be able to love those hostile people who make our lives painful and unbearable. Can we follow the example of Christ and love our enemies?
The commandment to love challenges us to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. May we look to the example of the saints to love – event when it’s hard – as we draw near to the Lord and one another.