A Homily on the Christian Call to Love
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Love your enemies.” St. Therese of Lisieux writes, “To love Jesus and others without feeling the sweetness of that love, that’s a kind of martyrdom” (Letter 73). “When I feel nothing, when I am incapable of praying or practicing virtue, these are times when I can give Jesus more joy than all the empires of the world, as by a smile, or a friendly word, when I much prefer to say nothing at all” (Letter 122). It’s by loving those around us that we prepare to love even our enemies.
It’s hard to love one’s enemies, but isn’t it also hard to love the larger number of people we live with who are neither enemies nor friends? In a random group of fifty people, about five will really like you and be your friends. About five others won’t like you at all, and probably never will. The other forty, the vast majority, really don’t care one way or the other. How can our love reach out to this larger number of people around us?
In our duty to love, no one can be excluded. But how can we learn to love like that? Cardinal Newman writes, “God’s merciful Providence has in the natural course of things narrowed for us this large field of duty. We are to begin by loving our family and friends. … By submitting to their wishes though contrary to our own, by bearing with their infirmities, by overcoming their occasional waywardness with kindness, by dwelling on their excellences … and so we form in our hearts that beginning of charity which is small at first, but like the mustard seed will grow to overshadow the earth.”
Actually, how well do we love our family and friends? There’s a story about a woman who bumped into a stranger at the supermarket. “Excuse me,” she apologized, “I didn’t watch where I was going.” That evening, while washing the dishes, her little son stood behind her. She turned, and nearly knocked him down. “Get out of the way” she said harshly. The little boy’s heart was stricken with pain as he backed out of her way. Later that evening his mother sat down to rest and remembered the courtesy she had shown to a complete stranger in contrast to the abuse she inflicted on her own son. Feeling remorse, she went to the boy’s room, sat on his bed and said, “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you today.” The boy threw her arms around his mother’s neck and said, “Oh, Mom, that’s okay, I love you.” Then he reached over to the bedside table and picked up a bouquet of flowers. “Here,” he said, “I picked these today for you because they’re pretty, like you.” His mother began to cry from mixed emotions of shame and happiness. She kissed and hugged her little boy very close.
“Love your enemies.” We begin by first loving our family and friends. Forgetfulness, anger, selfishness, bitterness, withdrawal, resentment, and laziness wage constant war against loving those who are closest to us.
It’s not easy. Two young children, a brother and sister, were told to be good, to love each other, because God is watching them all the time. They became nervous and fearful of God until a loving grandfather took them in his arms and said, “Yes, God sees you all the time, but he’s not watching to catch you doing something wrong so that he can punish you. Rather, God loves you so much that he cannot take his eyes off you.” At the center of the Christian life is the possession of a great treasure, God’s love for us. We learn to love by being loved. We are loved by Love, by Jesus who died for us, who gives us his heart and his Spirit in this Eucharist. It is the Holy Spirit who inspires and enables us to really love our family and friends, and then to reach out to the multitude of ordinary people around us, even our enemies.
