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. Most of us have quite a different image of God. We don’t think of God as being kind to the wicked; we think of God as punishing the wicked. But that is not what Jesus tells us of God. He tells us that we must become like God. We must love as God loves; we must be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. He uses this idea of loving our enemies as the key to understanding how we do that.
( Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
