We have a problem in learning to love even those who are closest to us. So how on earth can we possibly love our enemies? To love our enemies is a basic teaching of the gospel and it’s one of the ways in which Jesus actually shows us the nature of God. When he tells us in St Matthew’s Gospel that we must love our enemies, he relates that relationship to those who have hurt us directly to the nature of God: God who causes His sun to shine on the good and the bad alike; God who is undiscriminating in the way he causes his rain to fall on the good and the bad alike; God who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked (Matthew 5:45). So this commandment to love our enemies is a way of teaching us something of the very nature of God.
(Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
