Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 5:43-48

“… pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father ….”

Today’s Gospel passage concludes Jesus’ set of contrasts between the commands of the Jewish Law and Jesus’ commands to love.  Each contrast uses a variation of the form, “You have heard it said … but I say to you.”

You could argue that Jesus saved the hardest for last. The question that Jesus tackles concerns how we are to love our enemies. The simple answer is: “As Jesus did on Calvary.” This helps us understand Jesus’ final words in the fifth chapter of Matthew (that is, the end of today’s Gospel Reading): “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

If we want to go further, we might ask how our enemies got to be our enemies in the first place.  We ought to be mindful that we sinners often gain enemies because of our sins.  So one way to shorten the list of our enemies is to sin less.

Jesus, of course, was sinless, but still had plenty of enemies.  In fact, Jesus had enemies for just the opposite reason that sinners do:  because of His unwillingness to compromise with evil.  To whatever extent we may, through God’s grace, bear holiness in our own lives, we will win enemies for this reason also.  Nonetheless, we must love all of our enemies as Jesus loved on the Cross.  On Calvary, Jesus gave His life in sacrifice not only for His Blessed Mother, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalen.  He just as willingly offered up His life for the salvation of those who drove the stakes through His sacred Body.