Today’s readings: Click on today’s date at http://www.usccb.org/bible/
Perfect love, perfect hatred
Saturday March 15, 2014
Saturday of the First Week of Lent
Matthew 5:44-45
Jesus says, “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your heavenly Father. For he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”
Portia pleaded with Shylock to release her friend, “The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.” Shakespeare has her continue, “It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
Which I think we all know is true. But we still resist. Paul’s reminder from Proverbs is powerful too, and equally hard to hear: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he’s thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals upon his head.”
David Steindl-Rast says an interesting thing: “If we have no enemies, maybe we have never had the courage to take sides. The command to love our enemies implies that we must have enemies. How else could we love them? God certainly has enemies. Yet the same God … is love.”
The idea of loving anyone, including enemies, as you love yourself only works when you “realize that your self is not limited to your little ego. Your true self includes your neighbor. You belong together – radically so. And it costs you no effort to belong to yourself” (Gratefulness, p. 168-9).
The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. “Perfect hatred” might even be the flip side of perfect love, to Steindl-Rast’s way of thinking. Both are intimacies. The other person matters, is a part of “me.” Indifference is the deep sin, the separater, the isolater, the lie.
The Message translates the conclusion of this surprising part of Jesus’ sermon on the mount: “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it … the way God lives toward you.”
Today the snow’s all melted, Lord. The sky is blue, the earth is brown and gray. And between the leaves come tiny shoots of green, reaching up. What’s good is good, for all your children. We can love like you do, Lord, when you give us eyes to see and ears to hear you over our keening cries of self-pity and pain. Give us your peace.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1244
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